Tired of turning on the radio or TV, or reading your daily paper and getting nothing but bad news?

Contrary to our daily corporate news experience there IS good news in the world. We just have to look for it. That’s what Good News Network hopes to provide – all good news, all the time. But we could also use your help – send your good news stories to mdobbin[at]telus.net with GNN at the start of the subject line.. Thanks to Elaine Hughes from Saskatchewan for contributing most of the following stories.

For full story, click on the headline

Guerilla theatre, British style

How do you talk to people about politics? How do you get them to think about what they’re doing? About shopping versus thinking? About the right to free speech/ Well, you tak a bull horn to down town London and, well, talk…

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The Story of Human Rights

Most people when asked the question what are human rights have a hard time answering.  That may be because there is precious little time devoted to the notion of rights in school. Watch this great, short (nine minutes) video produced by the group Youth for human Rights that tells the history of human rights.

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Recycled condos: More than the sum of its parts

TORONTO, ON -  It looks new. It smells fresh. It has a new home warranty. Yet, some of the parts of its sum have been around at least once before. Recycled materials are beginning to be used in the construction of new condos, not to save money but to save the planet.

CPAWS welcomes today’s announcement of new parks for Mealy Mountains, Labrador

Happy Valley-Goose Bay – The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society welcomes the announcements today by the Governments of Canada and Newfoundland-Labrador that they will establish a new national park reserve and an adjacent provincial waterways park in the pristine Boreal wilderness area of Labrador’s Mealy Mountains.

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Hydrogen in Every Home: Japanese Slash Energy Use and CO2 Emissions

Trials by companies including Panasonic and Toyota are underway at 3,000 homes throughout Japan, to bring mini hydrogen power plants into backyards that will provide heat and power while emitting a fraction of the carbon dioxide of normal energy sources by using a hydrogen fuel cell to convert natural gas into electricity. It’s called a fuel cell cogeneration system.

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Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group

CAP HAITEN, Haiti – AIDG, the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, is the type of locally headquartered, nimble organization that will be most important in Haiti’s recovery process after the big troops have cleared away. They offer seed funding and other help to local entrepreneurs to start small businesses selling green tech solutions like biogas digesters that are affordable to people making less than $4 a day…

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INLA dumps weapons
BELFAST (Reuters) – One of Northern Ireland’s deadliest paramilitary groups has dumped all of its weapons in front of independent witnesses, the militants and the commission overseeing the province’s disarmament process said on Monday.
Confirming what sources close to the militants told Reuters on Saturday, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) said it had got rid of all its weapons and ammunition, four months after announcing an end to its armed struggle.

Building their own future

Most people feel more energy on a sunny day, but for the students of Campbell Collegiate in Regina a sunny day brings a different kind of energy in the form of hot water produced by their solar-thermal panels. Thanks to the Campbell Collegiate Environment Club, students can wash their hands or shower after gym class knowing that the hot water they are using produces fewer greenhouse gases than a conventional fossil fuel system.

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A Heart for the Homeless

Peter Larson, 15, brushes his teeth, tugs a hat over his ears and hugs his mom good night before walking out of his family’s cozy home and climbing into a cardboard box on his back porch in Plymouth, Minn. (pop. 65,894).

On the first night of Peter’s 40-night “sleep out” that ends Dec. 23, the temperature is expected to drop into the lower 20s—a forecast that makes the lanky teenager smile. Every November and December since he was a first-grader, Peter has camped out for a cause—experiencing what it’s like to sleep in Minnesota’s frigid air while raising money to help homeless people stay warm in affordable housing in the Minneapolis suburbs.

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Latin America distances itself from U.S. on drug war

Researchers from Latin America, the United States and Europe agreed that the debate is now centered on a search for local solutions rather than the broader policing strategy long dictated from Washington.

“There is an awareness that continuing to do what we have been doing does not work,” said Ricardo Soberon, a Peruvian expert….

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Lost generation – a palindrome

A palindrome reads backwards as well as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward.  Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite.

Jan 21, 2010
OTTAWA – Today, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Canadian government has violated a national environmental law aimed at ensuring sustainable development. In a case centered on the proposed Red Chris mine in British Columbia, the Court ruled that the federal government cannot split projects into artificially small parts to avoid rigorous environmental assessments.

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Invasion of the Little Green Molecules

PORTLAND, OR – While the world’s climate negotiators were getting ready for Copenhagen earlier this month, a meeting was taking place in Mumbai to discuss progress in green chemistry, a field that – like the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions – has the potential to greatly enhance the world’s environmental health and sustainability.
In the developing countries where so much of the world’s manufacturing occurs and which are home to much of the world’s worst industrial pollution, a move to green chemistry has the potential to improve working conditions as well as health and safety for communities where industry is located.

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U.S. Vehicle Fleet Shrank 2% Last Year, Biggest Decline in Decades — Report

NEW YORK – Americans scrapped 4 million more cars and trucks last year than they purchased, the first significant drop in the U.S. auto fleet in more than four decades, according to a new report.

The United States scrapped 14 million vehicles last year while buying only 10 million new ones, dropping the nation’s fleet from an all-time high of 250 million to 246 million, according to the Earth Policy Institute.

Lester Brown, the author of the report, said the drop — the first significant shrinkage the U.S. fleet has seen since record-keeping began in 1960 — represents a “cultural shift away from the car” and estimated the fleet size will continue to recede during the next decade. He estimated the fleet could shrink a total of 10 percent by 2020.

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Look, up in the sky – it’s a garden

BRISBANE – In the future, Brisbane skyscrapers could be enveloped in a tight-gripped tangle of green vegetation – but it won’t be the Day of the Triffids-style apocolypse you might imagine.

The Queensland Government has just signed a deal with the Singapore National Parks Board that could see scientists grow plants on the walls and roofs of the sunshine state’s high rise buildings to reduce heat and improve air quality.

Shane Holborn, research team leader for the Queensland Primary Industries and Fisheries’ lifestyle horticulture group, said vegetation had proven to have a significant insulating effect on buildings, and the Government was keen to test, adapt and use the concept in Queensland.

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China: New law: Buy all renewable power available

BEJING – China’s national assembly Saturday adopted a law supporting the renewable energy industry.

The new law, an amendment to one on renewable energy adopted by the National People’s Congress standing committee, obliges electricity grid companies to buy all the power produced by renewable sources.

It also empowers the State Council’s energy department, the electricity regulatory agency and its finance departments to determine the amount of renewable energy available in the country’s overall power generating capacity.

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A Once-Dark Polaroid Factory Goes Green

NEW BEDFORD, MA – Many old factories around the country now sit dark and empty. But at a once-defunct Polaroid film factory in New Bedford, Mass., the lights are on again and a new industry is rising up inside the ruins of an old one.

The company Konarka makes solar panels, but not the kind most people have seen. These are thin, lightweight, flexible plastic sheets, and that enables them to be used in all sorts of new ways.

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Energy performance of buildings: photovoltaic systems to become a standard product in new buildings

BRUSSELS – Today, at the Energy Council the Swedish Presidency was congratulated for the agreement reached on the new Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD). Any new European building will have to be “nearly zero energy” by 2020, meaning that a very large share of energy consumption will be provided by renewable energy. Solar photovoltaic technologies are amongst the best suited to be integrated in buildings.

Solution to Killer Superbug Found in Norway

OSLO, Norway (Dec. 30) — Aker University Hospital is a dingy place to heal. The floors are streaked and scratched. A light layer of dust coats the blood pressure monitors. A faint stench of urine and bleach wafts from a pile of soiled bedsheets dropped in a corner.
Look closer, however, at a microscopic level, and this place is pristine. There is no sign of a dangerous and contagious staph infection that killed tens of thousands of patients in the most sophisticated hospitals of Europe, North America and Asia this year, soaring virtually unchecked.
The reason: Norwegians stopped taking so many drugs.

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Big Win for Bees: Judge Pulls Pesticide

Bee toxic Movento pulled from market for proper evaluation

NEW YORK – A pesticide that could be dangerously toxic to America’s honey bees must be pulled from store shelves as a result of a suit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Xerces Society. In an order issued last week, a federal court in New York invalidated EPA’s approval of the pesticide spirotetramat

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Boy’s dream to build windmill transforms lives in Malawi

The villagers thought he was crazy, but when the lights went on, the world noticed

WIMBE, Malawi–This close to the equator, night descends quickly in November. By 6 p.m., the sky bursts with stars. All is dark outside the village of Wimbe, save for a compound of houses where outdoor fluorescent lights twinkle.

Far off the electric grid, three windmills rattle in the breeze, producing enough electricity to provide indoor and outdoor lighting, and to pump water. The windmills are the legacy of a rickety prototype conceived by William Kamkwamba, a desperate teenager with big dreams.

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Slow Money: Bringing Money Down to Earth

Woody Tasch has thought a lot about money: what it does, how it moves, and how to connect people who have it with people who need it.  He’s been a venture capitalist, a treasurer and advisor to foundations, and the chairman of a network of angel investors. He even helped found a field of investing with the rather surprising name “community development venture capital.”

But he found that even socially responsible investing couldn’t do much to fix an economy that focused too much on extraction and consumption and too little on preservation and restoration.

Putting the Science of Happiness Into Practice

The study of happiness is experiencing a boom. Its practitioners include economists who believe that gross domestic product (GDP) is too limited a tool to measure the success of societies, psychologists and sociologists who feel that their disciplines have focused too much on neuroses and social problems and not enough on determining what kind of activities and policies actually contribute to happier societies, and political leaders who want to know how to make use of their findings.

During the 5th International Gross National Happiness Conference, held last week in Brazil, happiness proponents from around the world were able to come together and compare notes about the practical application of “happiness science.”

Towns rush to make low-carbon transition

The coastal town of Lincoln City, Oregon, has a lot to lose if nothing is done about climate change. The town sits 11 feet above sea level, and unchecked climate change could erode its beaches or flood the town.

Residents are taking matters into their own hands. “We could ignore it, let the federal government deal with it,” Mayor Lori Hollingsworth says. “We’re not willing to do that.” Last year Lincoln City committed to becoming carbon neutral through renewable energy, energy efficiency, and offsets.

Merida, January 3^rd, 2010 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – According to a study carried out by the Venezuelan Institute of Data Analysis (IVAD), Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s approval has dropped slightly, to 60.3%, from 62.4% last October.

Legal Victory for Endangered Species across Canada

Vancouver, BC – A precedent-setting legal victory for endangered species may put an end to years of unlawful action by the Government of Canada. In a September 9 ruling, the Federal Court admonished the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) for failing to identify the habitat of the Nooksack dace, an endangered fish restricted
to only four streams in BC’s Lower Mainland. The ruling will ensure greater protection of species-at-risk and their habitats across Canada….

Mini-farms sprout up in Mexico

Mexico City – A low-budget scheme has transformed a rubbish dump in an impoverished part of Mexico City into an urban garden, raising hopes for a new shade of green revolution. Iztapalapa, a bustling borough of two million people within the greater sprawl of Mexico City’s 20 million people, is an unlikely place to find an agricultural revolution.
But on a patch of land once strewn with the detritus associated with one of the world’s largest cities, there now sits a 400 square meter garden.

Sewage-sniffing dogs protect lakes, beaches

LANSING, MI – When Scott Reynolds saw Sable, a German shepherd mix, on a video at an animal shelter in 2006, he knew the dog was right for the job he had in mind.

Reynolds’ plan was to train Sable to sniff out illegal sewer connections, which dump billions of gallons of bacteria-filled water into rivers, lakes and streams each year, shuttering beaches, contaminating fish and costing millions in cleanups and lost tourism and recreation.

One day, all houses will be built this way

HERTFORDSHIRE, UK – Sustainably built, energy-efficient, inexpensive and double-quick to construct: if this is the future of social housing, it looks bright

Social housing tenants could soon be living in state-of-the-art green homes built from natural materials such as clay, hemp and sheep’s wool, which are being pioneered as part of Prince Charles’ campaign to create beautiful sustainable property.

Ontario bets billions on wind power

TORONTO – Province plans a massive boost to its electricity grid – a move that would put the province among North America’s green leaders

Ontario’s power grid is getting a $2.3 billion makeover as part of an ambitious, three-year effort to create 20,000 jobs and bring more green electricity to homes and businesses across the province.

Supreme court hands media a victory

The Supreme Court of Canada handed the press a major victory this morning, ordering a new trial for an Ottawa newspaper that allegedly libelled a police officer who helped search for survivors after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York City.

The ruling rewrote the law governing libel and defamation, giving the media an opportunity to justify its efforts to obtain fair, journalistic accounts of publicly-important events.

Rage Against the Machine take Christmas No.1 slot

Rock band Rage Against the Machine ended Simon Cowell’s four year domination of the Christmas charts tonight after a hugely popular Facebook campaign helped the Los Angeles nu-metallers snatch the Christmas number one slot from X-factor’s Joe McEdlerry.

More than half a million people downloaded the band’s famously anti-authoritarian and expletive laden track “Killing in the Name” in what was seen as a broad protest against the increasing influence of manufactured pop music.

By Mike Dorning and Catherine Dodge

Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) — Americans want their government to create jobs through spending on public works, investments in alternative energy or skills training for the jobless.They also want the deficit to come down. And most are ready to hand the bill to the wealthy.

A Bloomberg National Poll conducted Dec. 3-7 shows two- thirds of Americans favor taxing the rich to reduce the deficit.Even though almost 9 of 10 respondents also say they believe the middle class will have to make financial sacrifices to achieve that goal, only a little more than one-fourth support an increase in taxes on the middle class. Fewer still back cuts in entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare or a new national consumption tax.

Gay woman wins Houston mayoral race

HOUSTON – A lesbian candidate won Houston’s mayoral election Saturday night, a vote that made the city the largest in the U.S. to ever have an openly gay mayor.

Best green activist – SHAWN-PATRICK STENSIL

TORONTO – Ding, dong, the $20 billion plan to expand Darlington is shelved, and you can partly thank tireless Greenpeace campaigner Shawn-Patrick Stensil. The gadfly of nukes took on Queen’s Park and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission at public hearings and through endless access-to-information requests that dragged the industry’s secrets onto the front pages – and still had time to blockade the Pickering station. You can bet he’ll be there again if nukes rise again, saying “No Candu.”

Vegetables to die for help Montacute’s men to reach ripe old age

SOMERSET, UK – A little village in Somerset has been identified as Britain’s safest place for old men to grow even older.Men of retirement age living in Montacute (pop 640) have a longer life expectancy than their contemporaries anywhere else in Britain………

“The variations in life expectancy are due to substantial differences in general health and lifestyle patterns between different parts of the UK. The North-South divide in particular is very striking, and the variation in life expectancy by postcode band for female occupational pension scheme holders is about half of the above range.”

Farming in the heart of Joburg
JOHANNESBURG – A dumpsite in the Johannesburg inner city has been transformed into a 1-hectare food garden supplying fresh vegetables to children and HIV-positive people, in a project demonstrating the enormous potential of urban agriculture.

The Siyakhana Food Garden Project in Bezuidenhout Valley Park was set up in 2005 on an infertile patch of rocky and clay-filled ground donated by Johannesburg City Parks. Over the years various permaculture and soil conditioning techniques have transformed the land into a productive mini-farm that is home to an orchard of fruit and nut trees, an abundance of vegetables and a large herb garden…..

New national park gives Murray’s river red gums last-minute reprieve

CANBERRA, AU – In his last significant act as premier, Nathan Rees announced the creation of a massive new national park along the Murray River to protect much of the state’s remaining river red gum forests from logging.The surprise decision – made before the Government received a final scientific report on the issue – is a significant win for environment groups, but has left the timber industry seething.

The 42,000-hectare national park near Deniliquin, in the state’s south-west is seen as an attempt by Mr Rees to shore up his environmental legacy and as a parting swipe at right-wing elements of his party.

Polluters off roads, city breathes easy

KOLKATA, India – Fruit-seller Raju Haldar doesn’t have to rub his eyes or hurry to a tap to wash his face every hour, leaving his rickety basket in the care of a neighbouring vendor at Sealdah. Neither does he cough violently before going to bed at night. The air is cleaner and Raju vouches for it. ….

Ever since polluting vehicles were withdrawn four months ago, the city has been breathing easy. Figures emerging from a Times of India-SAFE survey confirm that. The survey was conducted at Shyambazar, Mullickbazar, Sealdah and Rashbehari crossings.

Syria: Tough new law against killer tobacco
DAMASCUS (IRIN) – A much tougher anti-smoking law in Syria, signed by President Bashar al-Assad and due to come into force in early 2010, will outlaw smoking in public places, including restaurants and bars, hospitals, sports halls and cinemas.
The law covers cigarettes and cigars, as well as traditional ’shisha’ water pipes.
‘The ban is timely,’ said Mahmoud Etah, a Syrian doctor. ‘Smoking, especially of water pipes, has become more prevalent among young people and we are yet to see the full health effects.’ 

WHO launches campaign to halt smoking in Africa
LONDON (Reuters) – The World Health Organisation launched a campaign on Friday to try to stop what could become a health catastrophe caused by rapidly rising levels of smoking in Africa.
The Geneva-based agency said it wanted to stop tobacco from becoming as prevalent in Africa as it is in other parts of the world and would set up a regional hub in 2010 for health experts to work with governments to introduce anti-smoking policies.

Britain, Italy top picks for windpower investment

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Germany and Spain will provide Europe’s biggest growth in windpower over the next decade but Britain and Italy might give the best returns on investment, the head of the European Wind Energy Association said on Friday.

Efforts under way to stem U.S. school dropout problem
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Jesus Garcia dropped out of high school and figured he was destined for prison or a life shortened by violence—until he found an alternative school that became the family he never felt he had.
‘Without this school, kids would be dealing drugs, dying, gang-banging, all of it. Without this school there would be no leaders, no mentors,’ Garcia, an aspiring chef, told a group of former dropouts who have re-enrolled in alternative schools.
Some 30 percent of Americans drop out before finishing high school.

California utility PG&E to buy first wind project
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – PG&E Corp will build and operate a wind power project of up to 246 megawatts with the U.S. unit of Spain’s Iberdrola SA, marking the utility’s first foray to own wind generation.
PG&E said on Thursday that it expected to invest just over $900 million in the project. That figure includes the cost for Iberdrola Renewables to develop and build the system.
The proposed project would cover about 7,000 acres in the Tehachapi area of Eastern Kern County in Southern California.
The news marks the first move for PG&E to build and own wind power generation and follows Iberdrola Renewables’ plans to spend billions on renewable energy facilities in the United States through 2012. California utilities are working to meet state targets that a third of its electricity come from renewables by 2020.

Todmorden’s Good life: Introducing Britain’s greenest town

TODMORDEN, UK – ‘Grow your own’ fever has gripped the Pennines community, which is aiming for self-sufficiency

It’s an ordinary small town in England, but its residents claim they’ve discovered the secret that could save the planet. And with world leaders preparing to gather in Copenhagen in just over a week’s time to debate how to do just that, the people of Todmorden in the Pennines this week issued an invitation: come to our town and see what we’ve done.

In under two years, Todmorden has transformed the way it produces its food and the way residents think about the environment. Compared with 18 months ago, a third more townspeople now grow their own veg; almost seven in 10 now buy local produce regularly, and 15 times as many people are keeping chickens.

The town centre is dotted with “help yourself” vegetable gardens; the market groans with local meat and vegetables, and at all eight of the town’s schools the pupils eat locally produced meat and vegetables every lunchtime.