no. 124: Hello, November

Hey fam,

I took a little vacation and hopped over to Berlin and Prague for the week. Still managed to find and cover a lot of good stories, but I'll keep today's newsletter intro short and sweet.

Hope you had a great Halloween and enjoy the weekend!

Progress from Monday, October 28

🏞️ 12 new sites across Brazil, China, Colombia, France, Saudi Arabia, and Zambia have been added to a list recognizing effective biodiversity conservation called the IUCN Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas, showing credible and verified efforts to preserve nature and people (IUCN)

📉 Loud, smelly, gas-powered lawn mowers are being phased out in 26 states spanning every region of the US thanks to policies that support electric alternatives which require far less maintenance, increase air quality, and are more cost effective in the long run (Environment America)

🔋 An underground lithium deposit was found in Arkansas that’s so big it could single-handedly supply global demand for the critical mineral that’s often used in batteries, refuting the claim that the world may soon run out of lithium (Ivan Penn and Rebecca F. Elliott|NYT)

🚌 And today’s community win comes from lbthatsme123 who started a study in their county government to make public transportation free for everyone.

Progress from Tuesday, October 29

💨 A decommissioned wind turbine has been turned into a fully functional tiny home with a toilet, shower, and kitchen powered by solar panels, showing how we can reuse old infrastructure, and the interior is 387 square feet which is honestly bigger than many apartments in New York City (Grace Snelling|Fast Company)

🛰️ NASA broke a record by sending complex information to a spacecraft 290 million miles away from Earth in a series of laser experiments testing deep space communications by sending 11 terabytes of data and a 45 second ultra high definition video (NASA)

🐦 A creative project called BirdReturn is paying rice farmers to flood their fields earlier and for longer to help migrating birds like the western sandpiper by creating 120,000 acres of temporary “pop up” habitats to support their long journeys (Natalia Mesa|HCN)

🧶 And today’s community win comes from lo2us.flow3r who started a crochet club for like minded individuals to learn, be with friends, and be happy.

How a military airport became a public park

When an airport shuts down, what do you do with all that open land?

If you’re Berlin, you turn it into a giant public park called Tempelhofer Feld.

But this area went through a pretty insane evolution; It was farmland back in the 1600s until the Prussian military took it over, then going through periods of horse racing, train stations, and an experimental area for early flights of balloons and planes.

Germany’s dark history is no secret, and this area then became a concentration camp before thousands of forced laborers built it into the Tempelhof airport, with a flight every 90 seconds in its peak.

When operations ended in 2008, developers wanted to turn it into luxury housing when an initiative by citizens to preserve it for public recreation gained traction and eventually became law.

Which brings us to today where anyone can bike, explore, and relax on 900 acres of runway and grass, an area larger than New York’s Central Park, filled with birds and community gardens and someone seeming always flying a kite.

So this place that was once used to help wage war has completely turned around and is now also housing refugees from Ukraine, showing us better ways are possible and happening.

What else?

⚡️ Singapore is set to get clean energy from Australia via underground cables,

🛰️ NASA's satellites that launched earlier this year have started detecting greenhouse gas emissions,

🗑️ Garbage trucks in Louisville have gone fully electric,

🇪🇺 Europe's emissions fell by 8.3% last year.

This newsletter was written by Jacob Simon. 700,000+ people are in our community replacing dread & fear with hope & action across Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and now YouTube. You can say hi on LinkedIn, or by emailing jacob@jacobsimonsays.com