Inspiring News Articles
Excerpts of Highly Inspiring News Articles in Major Media
Below are one-paragraph excerpts of highly inspiring news articles from the major media. Links are provided to the original inspiring news articles on their media websites. If any link fails, read this webpage. The most inspiring news articles are listed first. You can also explore the news articles listed by order of the date posted. For an abundance of other highly inspiring material, see our Inspiring Resources page. May these inspiring news articles inspire us to find ever more ways to love and support each other and all around us to be the very best we can be.
A fellow at New York City's Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Sam Parnia is one of the world's leading experts on the scientific study of death. Last week Parnia and his colleagues at the Human Consciousness Project announced their first major undertaking: a 3-year exploration of the biology behind "out-of-body" experiences. The study, known as AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation), involves the collaboration of 25 major medical centers through Europe, Canada and the U.S. and will examine some 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrest. TIME spoke with Parnia about the project's origins, its skeptics and the difference between the mind and the brain. What sort of methods will this project use to try and verify people's claims of "near-death" experience? When your heart stops beating, there is no blood getting to your brain. And so what happens is that within about 10 sec., brain activity ceases — as you would imagine. Yet paradoxically, 10% or 20% of people who are then brought back to life from that period, which may be a few minutes or over an hour, will report having consciousness. So the key thing here is, Are these real, or is it some sort of illusion? In my book What Happens When We Die? ... I wanted people to get both angles — not just the patients' side but also the doctors' side — and see how it feels for the doctors to have a patient come back and tell them what was going on. There was a cardiologist that I spoke with who said he hasn't told anyone else about it because he has no explanation for how this patient could have been able to describe in detail what he had said and done. He was so freaked out by it that he just decided not to think about it anymore.
Note: How interesting that when something amazing happened that this cardiologist could not explain, he chose not to think about it rather than consider that there might be some deeper explanation. For an excellent analysis of how this kind of thinking stops scientific progress, see our essay on fluid intellignece available here.
Faith was curled up on the carpet beside her agent, Mike Maguire, who kept reaching down to hand her pieces of his chicken sandwich, when their waitress gave him an easy one. "What kind of dog is that?" asked Alicia Weedon, 16. With a flair honed in scores of such encounters, Maguire, a sports agent from Fairfax County, said simply, "A two-legged dog." The chow mix jumped up, her haunches tight and six-pack abs working, and began to walk. She's been on Oprah and Montel. She's been on Japanese and Korean TV and is scheduled to fly to Istanbul next month. Faith has that kind of effect on people. The 5-year-old was born with a shriveled left leg that flopped behind her and had to be removed and a legless, partial right paw with two nails she still hates getting clipped. There is an industry of rolling aids for disabled pets. But peanut butter on the end of spoon and tossed gummy bears got Faith up off her chest. Faith's owner, Jude Stringfellow, 46, said she gave up her job as a teacher in Oklahoma to take Faith on the road. Her son found Faith as a puppy, and the dog has grown into a calling and a job, Stringfellow said. She's considered starting a charity, but the idea has stalled, she said. She said that she does not keep records but that the money has been minimal and that she has passed it on to other charities. Her focus, she said, is spreading Faith's message. "I want people to understand that you can be imperfect physically and still be perfect through your soul, through your spirit," she said.
Note: For an inspiring five minute video of this amazing pup, click here.
Dr. Frank Artress, the former Modesto cardiac anesthesiologist turned African bush doctor, has found little time to eat since his story went around the world a month ago. Artress nearly died from high-altitude pulmonary edema while on a 2002 trek up Mount Kilimanjaro, prompting him and his wife, Susan Gustafson, to make a 180-degree life change. They sold everything they owned and moved from Modesto to Tanzania to administer health care in one of the poorest nations in the world. They wanted to give back to the people who ran Artress down the mountain on a stretcher while singing Swahili prayer songs. Every year since, the couple have spent one month in the United States, fundraising at house parties and collecting checks from friends and family. The donations helped them open a small clinic last month in Karatu, where they have already treated patients with broken bones and chronic seizures. In recent weeks, interest in their work has multiplied as Artress' story, about the social power of the individual, has spread on the Internet. The outpouring comes as philanthropy is becoming more personal, through microloans or community service projects in public schools. With technology exposing the plight of the world's poor, volunteerism is on the rise and the Bay Area tops the list of the most-generous regions. Two decades ago, bookstores were filled with best-sellers about how to make a million. Today, books such as Three Cups of Tea and Mountains Beyond Mountains are best-sellers that inspire humanitarian activism and are helping raise millions of dollars for charity.
Mater Dei High School finished first and third out of 33 high school and college student teams from North and South America, shattering the miles per gallon record set last year by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Mater Dei's "6th Gen" car won the traditional fuel combustion category in the Shell Eco-Marathon Americas with [a] run of 2,843.4 miles per gallon. Mater Dei's other car in competition, "5th Gen" finished third with a Friday run of 2,383.8 miles per gallon. Mater Dei wins $10,000 for first prize, along with an additional $2,400 for internal combustion engine awards. The Eco-Marathon Americas, which began in 2007, is a gathering of college and high school student teams trying to drive the farthest distance using the least amount of fuel. Collectively, it's an effort to change the way the world uses energy. Each team uses a hand-built, high-mileage prototype vehicle at the California Speedway from vehicle design to management to financing, the student teams managed their vehicles from start to finish. In addition to being eco-friendly, the competition is also about giving the students an opportunity to gain practical experience in science, math, business and design.
Note: Why wasn't this remarkable news covered by any major media other than this NBC affiliate? For another astonishing, yet little-known engine invention by high school students, click here. For more on the repression of new energy inventions, click here.
Ninety-seven-year-old Irena Sendler, just four foot eleven, saved twenty-five hundred children from Nazi death camps. Few knew. Mrs. Sendler seldom spoke of what she did. Considering all the remarkable stories from the Holocaust that have surfaced over the years, it's hard to believe this one lay mostly unnoticed for sixty years, until four high school girls from Uniontown, Kansas, uncovered it. Thanks to those teenagers, Mrs. Sendler has just been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. That tiny Catholic nurse not only saved all those children, she managed to sneak a Jewish man out of the Warsaw Ghetto. Right past the Nazi guards. She later married him and had two children of her own. Television is at its best when it shows the incredible things of which we are capable. People who see things that need to be done and do them without regrets or apologies; without sending out a press release. I like to reflect on such unassuming people like ... Irena Sendler. Perhaps they are put in a reporter's path to remind us never to get so caught up in the "Big Stories" that we overlook everyday people working in the woods. Their lives mattered and did make a difference.
Note: For an MSN video clip depicting the inspiring story of this woman and the teenagers who rediscovered her, click here. For the wonderful website dedicated to her, click here.
Wim Hof [is] known as 'The Ice Man." Scientists can't really explain it, but the 48-year-old Dutchman is able to withstand, and even thrive, in temperatures that could be fatal to the average person. It's an ability he discovered in himself as a young man 20 years ago. "I had a stroll like this in the park with somebody and I saw the ice and I thought, what would happen if I go in there. I was really attracted to it. I went in, got rid of my clothes. Thirty seconds I was in," Hof said. "Tremendous good feeling when I came out and since then, I repeated it every day." It was the moment that Hof knew that his body was different somehow: He was able to withstand fatally freezing temperatures. Hof began a lifelong quest to see just how far his abilities would take him. In January of 1999 he traveled 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle to run a half-marathon in his bare feet. Three years later, dressed only in a swimsuit, he dove under the ice at the North Pole and earned a Guinness World Record for the longest amount of time swimming under the ice: 80 meters, almost twice the length of an Olympic-sized pool. When he didn't experience frostbite or hypothermia, the body's usual reactions to extreme cold, his extraordinary ability started to get the attention of doctors who specialize in extreme medicine. Dr. Ken Kamler, author of Surviving the Extremes, has treated dozens of people who tried to climb Mount Everest, and instead nearly died from the frigid temperatures. He couldn't believe it when he got word of a Dutchman making the ascent with no protection other than a pair of shorts. "People are always looking for new firsts on Everest. It's been climbed so many times now, people climb it without oxygen, they climb it with all different kinds of handicaps. But no one has come close to climbing Everest in those kinds of conditions," Dr. Kamler said. "It's almost inconceivable."
Note: Wim Hof's charity foundation, Happy People of the World, is based in the Netherlands. Visit the Web site by clicking here.
The credit crisis may be fouling up billion-dollar takeover deals, but if you're a poor African seamstress who needs a loan for a new sewing machine, you could not ask for a better borrowing market to expand your business. Anyone with $25 to spare and an Internet connection can now become an international microfinancier through Kiva, an organization that matches individual lenders with impoverished entrepreneurs in the developing world. Steve Thomas, 50, a property tax consultant in Chicago, got started by lending $50 to a man in Togo who makes a living refurbishing used sneakers for resale. The loan was repaid in full and Thomas has gone on to fund 83 other ventures ranging from a cyber cafe in Ecuador to a mushroom-growing enterprise in Moldova. Microlending has been in use for decades. Muhammad Yunus shared the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize with Grameen Bank, the lender he founded in the early 1980s to help empower Bangladesh's rural poor. Several other institutions have developed since then, but Kiva is the first to open direct microlending opportunities to the general public with an online platform. Kiva hit the publicity jackpot in September when Oprah Winfrey featured the organization on her daytime television program, attracting a tidal wave of interest from Middle America. Demand was so high the day the episode aired, every loan on the site was fulfilled. Since then, Kiva has limited lenders to a $25-portion of each loan, the average of which is about $600. Even with the $25 cap, Kiva's lenders manage to fully fund each loan in 0.97 days, on average. The recent holiday season brought a fresh crop of lenders -- Kiva sold $2.2 million in gift certificates, which the givers were able to print out from their own computers.
Note: For a treasure trove of stories about the amazing successes of microlending in raising some of the poorest out of destitution, click here.
Jessica ... lives what some might consider the perfect alternative lifestyle. She makes enough money to pay for rent and food (from the farmer's market) by teaching classes at the Solar Living Institute and selling her self-published zine about alternative fuel. She grows much of her own food and raises chickens and bees in her backyard. As a child, her family life centered around growing food and cooking meals together. Her parents never emphasized money. She hasn't strayed far from her upbringing. When asked about her views on money, she said: "It's better to be happy than to worry about your credit card bill or working a lot." One of the key points of being happy, for Jessica, is to bank at Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union. Jessica's made it a point to convert her friends to using credit unions, which are nonprofit banks. "I say to people: So you shop at a farmer's market. You use alternative fuel or bike or take public transportation. But you still bank at Bank of America?" She laughed at the paradox of the small-is-beautiful crowd supporting a global corporation. "With banks, it's a business and all your money goes to make someone you don't know rich -- but with credit unions, all the money goes back into the community," Jessica explained. "It's people banding together to share the abundance." Credit unions -- also called cooperative banks or people's banks -- have origins in Europe. They were first started by German farmers in the 1860s who felt private banks were charging unfair fees. These rural people pooled money together in order to make loans within their tight-knit community. In North America, the idea of credit unions was first embraced by Canadians. These days in the United States, there are over 8,000 credit unions; 536 of them are in California.
Note: To locate a credit union near you (in the United States), click here.
Retired TV station owner and broadcast engineer, John Kanzius, wasn't looking for an answer to the energy crisis. He was looking for a cure for cancer. Four years ago, inspiration struck in the middle of the night. Kanzius decided to try using radio waves to kill the cancer cells. His wife Marianne heard the noise and found her husband inventing a radio frequency generator with her pie pans. "I got up immediately, and thought he had lost it." Here are the basics of John's idea: Radio-waves will heat certain metals. Tiny bits of certain metal are injected into a cancer patient. Those nano-particals are attracted to the abnormalities of the cancer cells and ignore the healthy cells. The patient is then exposed to radio waves and only the bad cells heat up and die. But John also came across yet another extrordinary breakthrough. His machine could actually make saltwater burn. John Kanzius discovered that his radio frequency generator could release the oxygen and hydrogen from saltwater and create an incredibly intense flame. "If that was in a car cylinder you could see the amount of fire that would be in the cylinder." The APV Company Laboratory in Akron has checked out John's ... invention. They were amazed. "That could be a steam engine, a steam turbine. That could be a car engine if you wanted it to be." Imagine the possibilities. Saltwater as the ultimate clean fuel. A happy byproduct of one man searching for the cure for cancer.
Note: Though this exciting breakthrough was reported in dozens of local media, not one major news outlet found it worthy of mention. To verify this yourself, click here.
The Persian poet Rumi was surrounded by news of terrorism. Mass murders from war -- what today would be called genocide and ethnic cleansing -- were a routine part of Rumi's 13th-century world. So, where's the bloodshed in Rumi's writing? Rumi, a man so advanced in Islamic training that he could issue fatwas, divorced himself from talk of revenge, retribution and eye-for-an-eye killings. Like Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Rumi insisted violence was an unsatisfying way of resolving issues. Sentiments like that have turned Rumi into one of America's best-selling poets -- someone whose thoughts on love and other matters are revered by hundreds of thousands of readers. Interest in the mystic from Persia (now Iran) -- in his all-inclusive message that the faithful of all religions have a common humanity -- has mushroomed in the past six years. Go to Borders, Barnes & Noble or any neighborhood bookstore, and you're likely to find many more Rumi titles than books by Robert Frost or Walt Whitman. So, who is Rumi? He was a mystic and a scholar. He was an adherent of religious Islam ... who, in the later part of his life, famously said, "I am not a Jew nor a Christian, not a Zoroastrian nor a Moslem." The love and longing that Rumi felt was everywhere, including his soul. "Keep in mind that the holy Quran states there is no force in religion," says Naini, a Rumi expert who has lectured on the poet at the United Nations. "Rumi wants to remind us that we are all children and the creation of God, regardless of religion, race, color, nationality, etc." In the current climate of war and warmongering ... Rumi's biggest gift to readers today may be his emphasis on the power of love and tolerance.
When other kids were doing homework and navigating the jangly uptake of adolescent hormones, [Derrick] Bedford was dealing pot in East Oakland.. It was the early '90s, when Oakland's crack entrepreneurs became folk heroes to kids on the street. For the next decade he was in and out of juvenile hall. He never went beyond seventh grade. He spent five and a half months in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. "From 12 to 23, it seemed like I was just a magnet to the police." Today, Bedford is a role model -- an exemplar of reinvention and a life transformed. Arrest-free for 11 years, he's a husband, a father of two and owns his own home. He loves his career. Bedford is on the opposite side of the law today. A juvenile institutional officer, ... he works with kids under house arrest. "No matter what these kids are going through," he says, "I have some experience and some testimony to help them through their situation." Bedford fell naturally into the work: He spoke the same language, knew the scams and could recognize the lies because he'd told them all. He brought credibility, and found that he loved the work and thrived on it. He won the Spirit of Youth Award, given by the Coalition for Juvenile Justice in Washington, D.C. "When I look back at my life," Bedford says, "there is definitely a lot of bad that I have done ... but I think it was all priming me to deal with the war we have going on with young African American men." Some days, he says, when he's walking through juvenile hall, "I'm just daydreaming. To grow up and be employed by the same county where I once was an offender ... is just unreal."
We can learn as much about human evolution and behavior by studying the sensitive, peace-loving bonobo as by studying the more violent chimpanzee—both of which share more than 98 percent of our DNA. "Bonobos help us to see ourselves more in the round," says Frans de Waal, a primatologist at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. In this interview, de Waal explains [why] it's vital to protect this highly endangered close relative of ours. De Waal: I first saw them in 1978. At the time, I knew a lot about chimps, because I had been studying them. The sense you get looking [bonobos] in the eyes is that they're more sensitive, more sensual. There's a high emotional awareness. At the time, I was interested in reconciliation after fights, and I wanted to know how bonobos did it compared to chimpanzees. Very soon I discovered that they were much more sexual in everything they did, and that interested me—not so much for the sex part ... but much more how they have such a peaceful society, because they are much less violent than chimpanzees. Bonobos tell us about the possibility of having peaceful relationships. When the Japanese scientists ... came along with the story that bonobo groups [meeting for the first time not only] mingle, but they have sex together, the kids play with each other, they groom each other afterwards ... all this was absolutely shocking and didn't fit the image that we had of where we came from. And it was totally ignored. It's very interesting: when something doesn't fit your thinking, the best way to deal with it is to shove it out the window and ignore it, and that's what the scientific community did for about 20 years.
Note: To see how bonobos use language symbols to communicate with researchers, click here. To access a wonderful series of articles, slide shows, and presentations on the bonobos from the PBS website, click here.
David Hartsough is quietly building an army. Hartsough is traveling the globe to rally a force that will march into the danger zones of the world armed with only a commitment to peace...In 1960, all across the southern states of the US, people began protesting [racial] segregation. Every Saturday, Hartsough and his black friends would leave DC, which had already been desegregated, and cross into Maryland. They would sit at a lunch counter there until they were arrested. When months passed and no one challenged the racist law [in Virginia], he and his friends mustered their courage. "Twelve of us went in and sat down at this lunch counter. Within minutes there were cars and sirens coming from all directions. They didn't arrest us, but neither were they going to serve us any food. We stayed there for two days, and it was the most difficult two days of my life." Hartsough and his friends endured vicious name-calling, lit cigarettes being dropped down their shirts, punches so hard they were knocked off their stools...and members of the American Nazi Party sporting swastikas and brandishing photos of apes. At the end of the second day, as Hartsough sat in meditation...a man approached him from behind. "He said to me, 'you nigger-lover', and he had this horrible look of hatred on his face; `if you don't get out of this store in two seconds, I'm going to stab this through your heart'." In the man's hand was a switchblade. "I had two seconds to decide if I really believed in nonviolence. I looked this man right in the eye, and I said, `Friend, do what you believe is right, and I'll still try and love you.’ It was quite amazing, because his jaw began to fall and his hand began to drop and then he left the store.'"
Even 91 years after peace interrupted the war, French generals still can't fathom why their soldiers disobeyed orders and joined the German enemy in the silenced battlefields for a forbidden Christmas truce. But Christian Carion, director of a stirring new film about the spontaneous 1914 ceasefire in World War One, said he was moved all the more when the British military asked to send copies of his decidedly anti-war film to their troops overseas. French generals said: 'You go ahead and make your movie but without us, we don't want to be partners to this rebellion.' I said: 'Rebellion? It was 90 years ago? Is that still a 'rebellion'? They said 'Yes'. The heart-warming film of the real-life story about enemies who left the trenches in northern France, east of Paris, to sing carols together, swap chocolate, drink toasts and bury their dead for a few days in 1914 has nevertheless been seen by a lot of French people. "Joyeux Noel" ["Merry Christmas" in English] rose to the top of the French box office after its November 9 premiere at home with 600,000 tickets sold the first week. Carion said the box office count hit the 1 million mark on Thursday -- a record for a film with subtitles in France.
Note: It is most interesting that an Internet search reveals the Yahoo News was the only media outlet to pick up this engaging Reuters story. There is a clear trend in the media to avoid stories that paint war in a negative light. For the full, inspiring Christmas truce story: http://www.WantToKnow.info/christmastruce
Ubiquitous Energy claims that its technology, UE Power, is the only patented and transparent photovoltaic glass coating that uses solar power to generate energy while remaining visibly indistinguishable from traditional windows. The transparent solar panels can produce up to about 50% of the power of rooftop solar per given surface area, so it's designed to complement solar panels, not replace them. Ubiquitous Energy ... was started by a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michigan State University scientists and engineers looking for new ways to integrate solar power technology into everyday products and surfaces. The company has begun a US site selection process for its first high-volume manufacturing line. Ubiquitous Energy says that "broad adoption of UE Power within architectural glass has the opportunity to offset up to an estimated 10% of global emissions, greatly reducing the 40% of global carbon emissions that come from buildings and improving their energy efficiency at the same time." Jay Lund, chairman and chief executive officer of Andersen Corporation, said: "Ubiquitous Energy's transparent photovoltaic technology is revolutionary and represents a new horizon for the fenestration industry."
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
There is no question that 2021 was another unpredictable year and we are still living in uncertain times. And so, as we say adieu to this turbulent year, we are highlighting eight positive trends that we see sticking around! The pandemic allowed us to slow down and reevaluate our work-life balance with new work patterns that are here to stay. Some people are now permanently working from home, and some returned to the office, even if for just a few days a week, under a hybrid model. We also saw an even greater, and much-deserved appreciation for our frontline workers. We have developed an increased respect for service industry workers and those people employed to keep our health care, infrastructure, and education systems running. Even on the world's biggest stage, mental health became a number one priority this year, and helped recenter the conversation around the globe around what makes a person thrive. With the loss and altering of life over the past almost two years, many of us have looked at ways to improve our overall health and extend our days. Maybe more of us can even achieve new heights such as this 105-year-old setting the world-record for the 100 meter dash earlier this year! Speaking of health, many people over the course of the pandemic wisely decided to bring more houseplants into their lives. This bit of green lifted moods and gave us plant parents new purpose as we spent more time in our homes working or learning remotely and social distancing.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Finland has deployed coronavirus-sniffing dogs at the Nordic country’s main international airport in a four-month trial of an alternative testing method that could become a cost-friendly and quick way to identify infected travelers. Four dogs of different breeds trained by Finland’s Smell Detection Association started working Wednesday at the Helsinki Airport as part of the government-financed trial. “It’s a very promising method,” Anna Hielm-Bjorkman, a University of Helsinki ... said. “If it works, it will be a good (coronavirus) screening method at any other places,” she said, listing hospitals, ports, elderly people’s homes, sports venues and cultural events among the possible locations where trained dogs could put their snouts to work. Finland is the second country after the United Arab Emirates - and the first in Europe - to assign dogs to sniff out the coronavirus. Passengers who agree to take a free test under the voluntary program in Helsinki do not have direct physical contact with a dog. They are asked to swipe their skin with a wipe which is then put into a jar and given to a dog waiting in a separate booth. The participating animals - ET, Kossi, Miina and Valo - previously underwent training to detect cancer, diabetes or other diseases. It takes the dog a mere 10 seconds to sniff the virus samples before it gives the test result by scratching a paw, laying down, barking or otherwise making its conclusion known. The process should be completed within one minute, according to Hielm-Bjorkman.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Amid a novel coronavirus pandemic, some of us have defied public health officials’ exhortations and headed to bars to be with other members of our species. More of us have stared into the weeks to come and wondered how we will cope without basketball games, book groups, worship services, yoga classes and dinners with friends. Humans are social animals, even what some call “ultra-social.” For millennia, survival has depended on being part of a group. If distancing seems hard, it’s not just you: It’s human nature. “We are the most extreme example of a species that’s decided that collaborating with others is going to be my entire strategy,” said Steve Cole, a professor ... at the University of California. These social skills helped our ancestors fend off predators and more efficiently gather and hunt food and raise offspring. Our emotional dependence on each other can make keeping our distance, even for the public health benefit of “flattening the curve,” feel crummy. Most who are reducing physical contact, of course, are not locking themselves into isolation chambers. They’ve got a few relatives or friends around. Technology and social media ... should now be viewed as a lifeline. “People are going to feel isolated and lonely unless they make an effort to reach out to each other, so what we have to do is make sure that we call people on the phone and Skype with them and send them texts and emails, especially the people who are least proficient on the Internet,” [psychological anthropologist Alan] Fiske said.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Social trends among California youth have been spectacular. Over the last generation, rates of arrests of Californians under age 20 have fallen by 80 percent, murder arrest by 85 percent, gun killings by 75 percent, imprisonments by 88 percent, births by teen mothers by 75 percent, and school dropout by more than half while college enrollments have risen 45 percent. Back in 1980, teenagers comprised 27 percent of California’s criminal arrests. Today, 9 percent. Anecdotes of kids gone wrong remain, but they’re rarer than ever. Modern youth trends challenge traditional theories of what makes teenagers act better. Family stability and adult behaviors have not improved; in fact, epidemics of drug abuse, criminal arrest, and incarceration plague middle ages (the parents of adolescents). High levels of poverty among youth remain. Recurring panics over video games, smartphones, and other made-up teenage dangers need to yield to efforts to improve education and reduce poverty. Today’s more education-oriented, activist youth deserve to contribute to political decisions and leadership. By their behavior changes and survey evidence, young people are better adapted to today’s rapidly changing world than their elders.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
The revolution in renewable power hit a new milestone in April. Last week the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released it's latest Energy Infrastructure Update (EIU), with data through April 2019. According to ... the non-profit SUN DAY Campaign, which analyzed the data, "that was enough to push renewable energy's share of total available installed U.S. generating capacity up to 21.56%. By comparison, coal's share dropped to 21.55% (down from 23.04% a year ago)." Of course it's important to note that capacity doesn't equal generation. Coal still generates more electricity than renewables. But, the trends indicate it's just a matter of time before that picture changes as well. But it is natural gas that is still the king of generation. Although renewable capacity additions are forecast to be well ahead of natural gas additions through 2022, it is likely that natural gas will continue to be the top source of U.S. power for quite some time. The EIU indicates that natural gas now represents 44.44% of total installed capacity. Because of the higher capacity factors for natural gas-fired generation, Energy Information Administration data show that natural gas provided 36% of U.S. power over the past 12 months, well ahead of coal's 27%. Further, the share for natural gas has grown in recent years, while that of coal continues to decline. But given the current trends, it won't be long before renewables supply the largest share of U.S. power.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
