Writing Slowly

I expect 2026 to be a better year than 2025, not through some kind of magic but because millions of people like you and me are working hard to make it so. Since I posted a link to a round-up of the under-reported good news from 2025 someone said ‘some of this was definitely written with ai, so might be worth fact checking 😂’.

I was a bit disappointed, since I wanted the good news to be true, and since I have to admit this could easily make me susceptible to getting taken in by unreliable slop. Well, life’s too short to check all the facts, even if someone is wrong on the Internet (obligatory xkcd link), and that famous cartoon of the guy trying to fix it is actually an accurate drawing of me¹. But I thought I should at least do a quick audit. And what did this reveal?

• Jaguars in Mexico up by 30%? Yes! According to Reuters.

• China’s carbon emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months? Yes! According to Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, as reported in carbonbrief.org.

• In May alone China installed 230 million solar panels, or nearly 100 per second? Yes! According to Foreign Policy.

• Species extintion rates have declined over the last century? Yes! According to “Unpacking the extinction crisis: rates, patterns and causes of recent extinctions in plants and animals” by Kristen E. Saban and John J. Wiens, 15 October 2025, Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2025.1717.

• Deaths from air pollution have dropped by 21% in a decade? Per 100,000 population, yes! According to IHME, Global Burden of Disease and reported by ourworldindata.org.

OK, that’s enough for now. These all check out and if you want to check more, try this: Pick one piece of good news that matters to you and spend 5 minutes or less verifying it with a primary source.

Look, you obviously don’t need me to tell you it’s not all good news. In South America the jaguars are still struggling etc. etc. But that’s not what the original article is claiming. The point is, people can and do act together to change things for the good and it actually works, even if the media mainly just reports endless disasters and crises.

This is not naive optimism, it’s a way of imagining a difficult future and working hard to make it reality. Resorting to inaction through despair would be a big media-induced mistake.

Oh, by the way, 26 years ago there was war in Kosovo. Now it’s the third safest country in the world (YouTube). As I said this kind of under-reported news isn’t magic; it’s people working together tirelessly to make change real.

“Come my friends,” said the poet Tennyson ages ago, “‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world”.

That’s how I’m beginning 2026 and I invite you to join me.

• Want to find your own reliable good news? Start with established sources like Our World in Data, which visualizes peer-reviewed research, or follow science journalists at major outlets who link to primary sources. When you see a claim, check if it cites specific studies or data with DOI links. And try reading the original sources for yourself. Academic research can be hard to read but it gets easier with practice. I like The Conversation for readable research summaries.

• Choose one issue that resonates with you—whether it’s public health, wildlife conservation, clean energy, air quality or something else — and find one organization working on it. Sign up for their newsletter, make a small donation, or volunteer an hour. Go in person to a local event. You don’t need to doom-scroll the bad news in 2026; instead you can add your small effort to the millions already making the good news happen.

I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri. The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now in paperback and ebook.