Climate change is not one of the things I see getting better. The only people who care about changing seem to be the people who don't contribute much in the first place. The largest polluters are still polluting more and more.

If there can be a silver lining in the heavy dark clouds of war, it’s that many countries are speeding up deployment of renewable energy to reduce their dependency on unstable or unfriendly nations

Younger people are more political active and engaged than ever. They are shifting policies towards the left. Unions are become more popular throughout the west and are achieving improvements in workers rights. People from all around the world are engaging with each other regularly on the internet which reduces us vs them mentality. Climate change is at the forefront of political discussion and is backed by the largest investment funds in the world. Technology is getting better, easier to use means it's accessible to more people. Your family and friends aging is unfortunately part of the human condition. The fact that we are talking about wages not keeping up with cost of living is a good sign it means we have identified it as an issue and politically the issue is already bring tackled.

There's a lot of bad things to dwell on but to say everything is getting worse is unhelpful and demoralizing. If everything was actually getting worse I can honestly say I would kill myself. I believe there is a future for us all to work towards.

With the exception of climate change, most of these issues have always existed to varying degrees, you're just constantly bombarded by the news of it now. Block all news sites and communities for a few weeks and see how you feel. I promise you will miss nothing. Anything important enough will slip through your filters online or in the real world.

Now check this out, we're seeing meaningful movement towards fair wages in places like California, and pretty much the entire world, across every industry is on strike this year. That's not bad news, that's great news! It means that people have been pushed too far and are finally pushing back.

Everyone gives the Boomers shit for problems they presumably created, but they were fucking active in politics as kids, man. They were constantly out protesting, fighting for improvements and changes. As a result their kids and grandkids had things pretty great for most of their lives and were complacent. That complacency led to companies and governments seeing how far they could push the limits and they've found those limits. People are fighting back now.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

--Frederick Douglas

Modern technology recently resulted in incredibly fast development of multiple vaccines to control a worldwide pandemic. Even just a few years earlier vaccines would have taken years and resulted in many more deaths

% of people living in extreme poverty.

People are also much more accepting and open to different people. Still a long way to go but I think we can appreciate the progress.

Taking lead out of gas did wonders for that, though there's enough lead in urban soil that it's probably not good to eat eggs from urban yard chickens, or some root vegetables like carrots, turnips, radishes, and beets if grown in urban soil. That said, other than some root veggies, garden veggies do not take up lead in the soil.

This isn't optimism bias. Optimism bias is personal ("smoking causes cancer, but I should be fine.")

What you're referring to is not optimism bias, but optimism viewed as a bias.

For me it's important to be optimistic because it allows you to keep working on an issue. If you think it's over and everything is fucked you won't work on the issue. You need to believe the issue can be fixed to take the steps to fix it.

Even for the climate, we’re finally taking action and the action is speeding up every year.

We may be too little too late, but we’re moving and we’re speeding up