When the world is dragging you down, remember there’s plenty of positives out there, too. Enjoy our rundown of 50 sensational stories from 2022, to give you a more optimistic outlook
Environment
1. Parts of the Great Barrier Reef are reportedly showing the best signs of coral recovery in 36 years!
2. In a major milestone, there are now enough solar panels around the world to generate 1 terawatt of electricity.
3. Based on current progress, scientists estimate that the hole in the Earth’s ozone layer will close around 2070!
4. As of September 2022, Denmark has become the first country in the world to offer ‘loss and damage’ compensation to developing countries affected by climate change, in the form of €13.4 million.
5. Engineers at Stamford University, California, have created revolutionary solar panels that can also generate electricity at night.
6. In a truly selfless and generous act, an anonymous French man who won the Euromillions jackpot has used his €200 million winnings to start an environmental charity.
7. In August, the world’s largest offshore wind farm, based off the Yorkshire coast, was declared fully operational. It features 165 wind turbines, and will help to provide renewable energy to more than 1.4 million UK homes.
8. WasteSharks are the latest incredible innovation tackling plastic waste, utilising drone technology. Designed by Dutch company RanMarine, the aquatic drones were inspired by whale sharks catching their prey, with each one able to hold up to 160 litres of waste.
9. Hawaii closed its last coal power plant to focus on greener energy options, removing the 1.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases it created each year.
10. In a world-first, the National Grid is removing 22 electricity pylons from Dorset’s Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and is replacing them with 60 miles of underground cables, in a bid to return the landscape to its natural form.
Animals
11. In April 2022, the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill was passed into British law, in a landmark ruling that recognises animals as complex beings, and protects them with stricter sentences against those who mistreat them.
12. Dog-lover Erica Hart has used a drone to search for and rescue more than 200 lost dogs in the past seven years. Helping distraught owners, her birdseye view has been invaluable in tracking down pups before any harm can come to them, and she’s even started a Facebook group to create a community on the watch for missing dogs, to reunite them with their families.
13. They may say ‘cat’s got your tongue’, but not any more. App, MeowTalk, claims to have cracked the code to translate a cat’s meows into human languages
What role do togetherness and kindness play in our communities, local and beyond?
In a brisk corner of the internet, more than 4,500 people come together for worldwide tropical cyclone discussion, and general weather observations. This group is made up of followers of Nathan Foy – creator of Force Thirteen, a YouTube channel that produces videos on cyclones and weather forecasts. But who could have predicted the force for good this community could become?
“Our community mostly resides on Discord [a chat app for voice, video, and text], and is open to anyone,” says Nathan, when asked to reflect on the space he has created. “We still very much are mainly weather-related, but we opened a ‘room’ for care and support a couple of years ago, under the initiative of our moderator team.”
When Nathan saw an increase in the amount of personal issues coming up in general conversations in the group, the team decided to take action to make their community a supportive space. Drawn together by their shared interest in cyclones, the group now also offers the option of informal peer-to-peer support, a fleet of moderators ensuring it all remains safe.
Talk of Discord servers and digital moderators may feel uniquely 2022, but the desire to gather is, of course, not. In fact, it’s going right back to basics. Coming together, meeting people where they are, building communities, and weathering the storm together – these are the practices that built our society in the first place, and that gave our modern world its foundations. And the more pressure we put on those foundations – the higher we build and the further away we get from our roots – the more we need to return to them, to nurture them, and to come together once again.
The group of Nordic countries (Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland) that consistently dominate the top spots in the World Happiness Report (WHR) have a couple of things in common. It’s important to acknowledge the financial climate – high GDP per capita, a welfare state, and ample social benefits – but beyond that, the WHR looks at other factors, including social support and generosity.
They’re the kind of values we might associate with ‘village living’. The phrase alone might conjure up images of a stroll to the local shop, the walk punctuated by friendly encounters with people you know by name, and who would be round in a jiffy the moment you need a hand. The good news is that this ‘village’ style connectivity isn’t particularly geographically restricted.
In figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when asked “Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?” on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is “not at all happy” and 10 is “completely happy”, those living in predominantly rural areas gave an average rating of 7.47, only marginally higher than the average rating of 7.25 given by those living in predominantly urban areas.
What’s more, in a report into community life, which ran from April 2020 to March 2021 and was published by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, 65% of respondents agreed that people in t
What does it feel like to reach rock bottom, and start to recover from that? We hear from three people who’ve reached out and received much-needed support from charities in the toughest of times. By sharing their experiences, they hope to help you, or someone you love, to reach out, too…
Consuming the news right now can be alarming, especially if you need help with your mental health and wellbeing. We’re constantly faced with stories illustrating how stretched NHS and mental health services are, and the ongoing economic uncertainty, which could impact the money we have available to even consider private counselling or support if we can’t endure the waiting lists for referrals from GPs.
While this might seem like a bleak way to start an article about returning from rock bottom, it’s our collective reality right now. That’s why it’s more important than ever to look out for each other, signpost the amazing charities and peer support groups who are doing incredible work, and for Happiful to champion the websites, phone lines, and chat services that are available to us all in our times of need.
However, we know from personal experience that taking the first step to call, email, or attend a support group can be daunting, even though it’s clear that what’s possible on the other side of that step could be life-altering, or at least better than the situation we currently face. That’s why we’re grateful to the following people who have kindly shared their stories about making that initial move.
If any of these stories resonate with you, please consider checking out the websites listed, and remember you can also find more information at
happiful.com/where-to-get-help.
Jane*, a member of AA, shares how she began her life of sobriety after a long-standing detrimental relationship with alcohol.
From the outside, and to a stranger, I would have looked like a perfectly fine and functioning person, but on the inside my life was utter chaos. By the time I attended my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at the age of 30, I couldn’t even imagine a world without alcohol.
You could say I was in denial the first time I went. I think I was just focusing on the differences between myself and everyone else’s experiences of drinking, and the impact it had on their lives. It wasn’t affecting me in the same way at all, and so I left that meeting and the AA behind. It took me a further 10 years to attend another meeting and to start my journey with sobriety.
By that point, the stories I’d heard before were ringing true for me. Alcohol was affecting my daily life, I wasn’