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First, the helpers...

💕 Glamour announced its 2025 Women of the Year, and one of the honorees is Ms. Rachel, who “redefined children’s media — and built her empire — by centering empathy,” which also influenced her advocacy around things like LGBTQ+ rights and children in Gaza.

🌀 For days, volunteers in Florida have been preparing food and other essential supplies to send to aid post-storm relief efforts in Jamaica, where Hurricane Melissa hit as a Category 5 storm, the most powerful to strike the island in over 35 years.

Animals

A new study shows that extinction rates have slowed across many plant and animal groups

Leading research that suggests the planet is currently experiencing another mass extinction is based on extrapolating extinctions from the past 500 years — but a new study found that extinctions in plants, arthropods, and land vertebrates actually peaked about 100 years ago and have declined since.

Their study found that past extinctions were mostly caused by invasive species on islands, whereas the most significant threat now is habitat destruction. Because of these differences, claims of a current mass extinction may be based on shaky assumptions.

According to their research, extinctions were most frequent among mollusks and vertebrates, but relatively rare among plants and arthropods. Most of them were species confined to isolated islands.

What’s the nuance? The researchers stressed that while it’s important to have this information to ensure accuracy in future protections, human activity is still a significant, urgent threat to many species: “Biodiversity loss is a huge problem right now, and I think we have not yet seen the kinds of effects that it might have.”

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You may also like ... New study: Nature conservation actually works, and we’re getting better at it

More Good News

A coffee shop in Portland is serving free SNAP breakfast “until everyone’s benefits are reinstated, or we go broke doing it.” And the coffee shop isn’t the only one helping — within 24 hours of its announcement, hundreds of people were already asking how they could help offset the cost, so they set up a fundraiser where people could make donations.

A year after an orphaned baby walrus was found traumatized on a remote Alaskan beach, she’s doing better than ever. When “Little Miss Walrus” arrived at the Alaska SeaLife Center in July 2024, she was barely more than one week old, and after months of rehabilitation, turned into a bubbly, curious walrus who developed a love for backflipping into the pool.

The largest African American quilt collection is now on display, preserving and rewriting history at a California museum. With 100 quilts from a 3,000-quilt donation on display, the exhibition explores how African American quiltmaking traditions migrated from the South to the West during the mid-20th century, carried by women whose textiles were both sources of warmth and acts of self-expression.

With a lack of community resilience centers, neighbors in Houston are creating solar-powered “hub homes.” A pilot program is creating emergency safe havens inside neighbors’ homes to prepare for extreme weather and power outages in response to decades of disinvestment and neglect.

Scientists repurposed plastic waste and coffee grounds into a carbon capture material. The technology is designed to achieve two major environmental goals: capture carbon dioxide from industrial emissions and manage growing amounts of waste by turning two common waste materials into a powerful CO2 absorbent.

People doing good

This viral Instagram fundraiser just raised $600K to feed 6 million people in need: ‘Hope still has helpers. That’s you.’

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good Data

Sales of internal combustion engine cars in China peaked in 2017, and in the world in 2018

Electric cars have rapidly increased in popularity in China over the past several years. In 2020, one in 18 new cars sold was electric — in 2024, it was one in two.

But the real shift happened back in 2017, when sales of internal combustion engine cars — which run mostly on petrol or diesel fuel — peaked. Just one year later, combustion engine car sales peaked globally.

This shift is vital to decarbonizing transportation, and means that oil demand is expected to peak even earlier than the International Energy Agency initially predicted.

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Good Quote

→ More quotes about hunger and feeding people in need

More Good bits

🎃 This Halloween, people are helping feed families.

🛒 If you have the funds, find a “grocery buddy” who’s losing SNAP benefits. (Threads)

👏 We’re not using “nasty, racist language to describe human beings.” (TikTok)

😎 Time traveling so we can install solar 30 years ago.

🐍 Never thought you’d develop empathy for rattlesnakes, did you?

What’s good?

It’s so inspiring to see so many people stepping up to make sure their neighbors don’t go hungry.

Or reply and tell me if you’re doing something else to help!

— Megan