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In the headlines...

🏥 Constituents are continuing to pressure U.S. senators to protect access to affordable health care by extending Affordable Care Act health care subsidies before the new year.

📰 Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed a new law that both restricts immigration enforcement outside state courthouses and makes it easier to sue immigration agents if residents believe their rights have been violated. (Gifted link)

Businesses doing good

Activists offered $1 million to create the first-ever Climate Nobel Prize, ‘if the Nobel Committee agrees’

A group of climate activists, led by tree-planting search engine Ecosia, launched a campaign pressuring the Nobel Committee to create a Climate and Planetary Health Nobel Prize.

The group argues that Alfred Nobel created the prizes to “serve the greatest benefit to humankind,” and that right now, “this means protecting the planet we all depend on.”

Currently, the Nobel Prize covers six categories with winners, or laureates, receive a €1 million endowment, along with a medal or diploma honoring their achievements. Ecosia has offered to cover the first endowment of €1 million (about $1.17 million USD) and would be “open to extending its support over time.”

Why is this good news? Nobel prizes aren’t just symbolic — they’re precedent-setting. Kroll said, “[It’s] an acknowledgement that inspires courage, creates urgency, and drives momentum for solutions. It would not just be a symbol, but could truly shift how the world values climate action.”

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More Good News

​An affordable housing partnership is addressing both housing and skilled trade worker shortages. A Colorado city is partnering with a local school district and Habitat for Humanity to teach kids trades by building homes that working people can afford.

​A plant-based, 3D-printed surfboard provides smooth rides and prevents microplastic pollution. Swellcycle is a new line of bespoke, 3D-printed surfboards made from a biodegradable plant material with almost no waste, as opposed to regular surfboards, which are made from petroleum-based foam blocks, much of which is wasted and ends up in a landfill.

​An organization is supporting pro-climate candidates in under-the-radar races at the state or city level. Analysts have estimated that 75% of the commitments that the U.S. made at the Paris climate agreement — which President Trump pulled the nation out of as soon as he took office — can be reached entirely without federal support.

​Over the course of 16 years, volunteer “citizen scientists” helped red squirrels return to an area of Scotland. It is thought that without the Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels project, the red squirrel population in Aberdeen could have disappeared, and grey squirrels, which are native to North America, would have expanded in the north east.

Education

Absenteeism rates plummeted at this middle school after incentivizing students to ‘pie a teacher’

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Animals & Environment

Newly uncovered fossils prove that sea cows have been protecting oceans for ‘tens of millions of years’

As gentle giants who both graze in the tranquil coastal shade of seagrass meadows, manatees and dugongs share the cheeky nickname: “sea cows.” And now a new study is further illuminating their ancestry, thanks to a treasure trove of fossils uncovered in southwestern Qatar.

By eating roughly 10% of their body weight in seagrass each day, the sea cows help maintain the health of sea grass beds — which in turn capture carbon and house vulnerable marine life.

They also help the environment by pooping in these underwater habitats, a natural fertilizer that recycles nutrients back into the ocean. The new fossils reveal that “this has probably been going on for tens of millions of years.”

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More Good bits

🐟 Environmentalists prevent overfishing … with more fishing.

🪦 Obituaries reveal what “a life well lived” is really about.

🍿 ‘Inside Out’ movies are therapist-approved.

🐸 Tadpoles are cute, but have you seen *toadlets*?

🔎 Time to channel your inner Sherlock/Enola Holmes.