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20 Really Good Things That Happened In 2020

20 Really Good Things That Happened In 2020

By now it's an article of faith that 2020 was a uniquely terrible year. The COVID-19 pandemic killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide, an undeniable and at least partly avoidable tragedy. Millions were thrown out of work, although the world unemployment rate is still below where it was in the Great Recession; millions more sank back into poverty. The global economy, once expected to grow by 2.5 percent, shrank by an estimated 4 percent. Every disaster, every dumb decision, every celebrity death, every personal injury we blamed on 2020, as if a unit of time could be out to get us. 

But if 2020 is to be treated as a sentient being, then it should also be applauded. That's right, I said what I said. The year saw advances on multiple fronts. Human ingenuity and tenacity brought some astounding breakthroughs. These were not mere silver linings, but major steps towards solving humanity's biggest problems and improving the quality of life for all. Fascism, climate change and institutional racism may have reared their ugly heads, but so did a coordinated popular response. As a result, the future is brighter than you think. 

With 20/20 hindsight, then, let us list the 20 most important developments in a year that desperately needed them. 

1. We saved millions of lives with new vaccines. 

In January, when the terrifyingly unknown virus called COVID-19 had killed just 26 people in Wuhan, Chinese scientists sequenced its genetic code and shared it with the world. The world lost no time in developing multiple vaccines, spending billions of dollars and racing toward human trials in mere months. "You are going to have your baptism of fire, folks," Dr. Anthony Fauci told a new vaccine research group at the National Institutes of Health. 

Fauci wasn't wrong. It was a baptism for an entirely new kind of vaccine using Messenger RNA, which teaches our bodies to make proteins that trigger an immune response. The mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer, with an assist from a little-known German biotech company, arrived with a speed and success rate (both around 95 percent effective) beyond our wildest dreams. Before 2020, no vaccine had ever been developed, trialed and approved in under four years. We did it in less than 12 months — twice. 

Distributing the vaccines far and wide remains a challenge for 2021. But given that Fauci and other experts once cautioned we may not even see a vaccine next year, the fact that healthcare workers are getting their shots in December is cause for celebration. And all that data from the accelerated effort will have knock-on effects. The dream of a single mRNA shot that can protect against multiple diseases is much closer now; mRNA also has applications in the fight against cancer. What we did this year will save millions of lives in the future, even when COVID-19 is a distant memory. 

2. We masked up and hunkered down, saving millions more lives. 

So much news coverage this year has focused on the COVID deniers, the defiantly maskless, the clueless spring breakers, the anti-lockdown protesters, the politicians who should have known better. But just this once, let's acknowledge the flip side: that millions of us were smart and responsible and did our best to comply with shifting public health guidelines in the face of an invisible enemy. 

From the start of the pandemic through now, clear bipartisan majorities in the U.S. favor mask mandates and social distancing, even though we didn't know what that was before March. Millions stayed at home even when it drove us crazy. We went without hugs and parties and family gatherings for months on end, all to reduce asymptomatic spread and protect the lives of vulnerable people we'd never met. It was, as some noted early on, one of the largest and most selfless acts of love the world has ever performed.

Could we have done better? Absolutely. The names of governors who allowed superspreader events like Sturgis to go ahead will live in infamy. The loss of more than 322,000 American lives is too much to bear, as is the mortality rate reaching 3,000 in a day. Even so, it could have been a lot worse. Consider the model from March that predicted 2.2 million coronavirus deaths this year in the U.S. alone — not counting the knock-on effects of so much strain on the entire health system — if public behavior didn't change at all. Our efforts to slow the spread were hampered by terrible leadership, but they were not in vain. They may have saved 1.9 million lives.

3. Women leaders got the job done. 

The year that the U.S. elected its first female vice president was also a shining moment for women leaders worldwide. Jacinda Arden, prime minister of New Zealand, led a nationwide effort to eradicate the virus and become the world's most COVID-resilient country; she won reelection by a landslide. Second-place Taiwan also has a female president, Tsai Ing-wen. Angela Merkel in Germany and Sanna Marin in Finland also won praise for their early responses. 

Male leaders, by contrast, were not only more likely to flounder in the face of a pandemic. They were also more likely to get COVID themselves through reckless behavior, as Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump all demonstrated. It's not as if we defeated misogyny in 2020, but the year was certainly an object lesson in why the patriarchy — and its assumption that men are inherently better leaders — needs to be dismantled for the good of our health. 

4. Democracy won — for now. 

Another notable thing about that list of countries most resilient to COVID? Eight of the top 10 countries on it were democracies. We already knew autocracy isn't good for a nation's economy; now we know it is also hazardous to your health. Turns out that high levels of public trust in leadership are what matters when it comes to battling a pandemic. Compelling our behavior by authoritarian force, not so much.

Speaking of authoritarians, the world spent the year wondering whether the U.S. was about to reelect one. Trump began 2020 with the senate letting him off the hook for trying to force Ukraine into a sham investigation of his political opponent. He and his cronies took that as a green light to meddle in the election any way they could. Most shamefully, Postmaster Louis DeJoy stymied USPS delivery just as it was needed to deliver millions of mail-in ballots during a pandemic. 

But a record-breaking coalition, 81 million strong, voted for the Biden-Harris ticket anyway. Most local GOP officials resisted Trump's efforts to roll back the results; Trump-appointed judges threw his cases out of court. Despite his best efforts, and ongoing rage, the most powerful man in the world has been fired by the people. Do not underestimate that fact, or how important it is for democracy campaigners everywhere. And the shameful response of Republicans who want an autocracy has at least opened all our eyes to the fact that democracy is fragile. The work of protecting it in 2024 starts now. 

5. Carbon emissions fell by the largest amount ever recorded. 

All of these things can be true at once: A deadly pandemic is hardly the best way to cut humanity's dangerous climate change-causing output of CO2; emissions fell by a record seven percent in 2020; they are very likely to rebound in 2021 and beyond if we don't take further action.

Luckily, there are signs that countries around the world are putting this emissions pause to good use. China, Japan and South Korea all committed themselves this year to net zero emissions by mid-century. In the U.S., Joe Biden was elected while promising a $2 trillion climate plan, a Green New Deal by any other name. The EU and the UK, locked in Brexit drama, seem to be competing for the greatest emissions reductions by 2030 (pledging 55 percent and 67 percent respectively). Corporations are on the same carbon reduction bandwagon, with Apple going net zero by 2030 and Wal-Mart following suit in 2040. 

6. Fossil fuels are in big trouble. 

Stick a fork in coal, it's done. 2020 was the first year since the start of the industrial revolution that saw more coal plants close than new ones open. Solar and wind power is now significantly cheaper than coal across most of the planet. Some 138 large financial institutions have now declared they will not provide funding or insurance for this dirtiest of fossil fuels. Why would they when there are much cleaner, cheaper alternatives?

Oil, amazingly, isn't doing much better. In 2020, BP declared we've reached peak oil already, and that it expects demand to drop by 50 percent in the next two decades. The so-recently-mighty Exxon wrote off $20 billion in assets and was delisted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The Keystone XL oil pipeline was called off: climate activism didn't kill it, a rapidly decarbonizing economy did. The largest pension funds in New York and the UK were among the heavy hitters divesting themselves from all fossil fuel stock this year. 

7. Electric cars are speeding growth.

Part of the reason for declining oil demand this year is the (quietly) roaring success of electric vehicles. Globally, 10 percent of all cars sold in 2020 were EVs — a 28 percent increase on 2019. That's some momentum; sales are predicted to go up again by 50 percent in 2021. The EU is driving much of that sales growth at the moment, but California — the world's largest car culture — just mandated an end to internal combustion engine sales by 2035. (Which is great, but as I wrote here, needs a next step: Like Germany did this year, California must mandate charging ports in every gas station.) 

8. More cities banished more cars. 

As traffic dropped everywhere, so did pollution. Many of us decided we actually liked the clear skies and increased walkability of cities that resulted. The mayor of Paris — another smart female leader — cruised to reelection by promising to eliminate half of all on-street parking spots and prioritize cyclists. Next up: turning major avenues into pedestrian zones and creating pedestrian "children streets" around schools. Barcelona just announced similar plans. Melbourne, Detroit, Portland: They're all on board with the Paris-style plan for "15-minute cities" where that's how long it takes to reach all the basic stuff you need on foot, on bike or via transit. 

9. We made the land greener.

It isn't that the world is getting greener in satellite photos; that's just the planet's plant matter doing us a favor and soaking up more of that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's that we are just starting to help on an unprecedented scale. For example, two million people in India planted 250 million trees in one weekend this year, the latest and largest in an ongoing annual planting scheme that aims to re-forest the subcontinent.

This is part of an international effort towards "rewilding" — restoring all degraded natural areas, which scientists said this year could store centuries' worth of carbon emissions and save 70 percent of endangered species. The UK has been committed to this for years, to the point of paying landowners to let their fields grow wild. It is now more woodland-covered than at any time since the age of Robin Hood.   

10. We made the oceans cleaner. 

You probably didn't notice given everything else going on in December, but 14 nations that own 40 percent of the world's coastline just banded together to create the world's biggest ocean sustainability initiative. In other words, an area of ocean the size of Africa will now be focused on restoring fish populations and reefs while eliminating plastic. 

That's just part of an impressive patchwork of new ocean rules and sanctuaries created this year, one of them three times larger than the UK. Such protections are working: The UN recently announced that the amount of large fish in the formerly-overfished Mediterranean and Black Sea has doubled in the last two years. 

11. We saved a lot of animals.

The pandemic's likely beginnings in a "wet" food market in Wuhan has forced a rethink on treatment of other species that goes far beyond its point of origin. China's Wildlife Protection Law now applies at sea for the first time, reducing its vast fishing fleet's massive footprint. 

That's not all. Back on land, China started protecting the pangolin, the world's most trafficked mammal, which was close to extinction. Interpol launched a massive international crackdown on multiple forms of protected species smuggling. And the simple fact of less traffic meant fewer animals killed by cars. Fatal collisions with wild animals in the U.S. alone were down 58 percent this year. 

12. Alternative meat had a good year. 

As well as protecting animals, we also ate fewer of them. Global meat consumption was down by an estimated three percent overall — a number that may increase as we get more data. It wasn't just the pandemic: a similar decline was seen in 2019. Two consecutive years of decline in meat have never happened before in this $1.7 trillion industry; experts are already talking about "peak beef."

Meanwhile, the startups aiming to replace beef had a banner year. Impossible Foods reported its first unexpected profit in May; its I-can't-believe-its-not-beef product is now being sold in stores across China and the U.S., with fake pork coming soon. Beyond also took advantage of a faltering U.S. meat supply chain with a new round of investment and rising stock price. 

13. Drug legalization is winning. 

As much as the U.S. election revealed a deeply divided nation, it also showed a surprising amount of consensus on one issue: drugs. Red states and blue alike legalized cannabis at an unprecedented clip. Psychedelic mushrooms, now decriminalized in Oregon and Washington, D.C., are the next frontier in treatment for a range of conditions such as PTSD. Oregon went further with a Portugal-style decriminalization of all drugs. 

The rest of the world is moving in the same direction. Argentina massively expanded its medical cannabis services and is even discussing providing it for free to low-income citizens. Perhaps most importantly in the long run, the UN removed marijuana from a list of dangerous drugs, clearing the way for more research into the still-mysterious lesser-known cannabinoids and their medicinal effects. 

14. Universal Basic Income had a great year.

Thanks to shameful obstruction by Mitch McConnell, it took the U.S. Congress until December to even get close to passing a second stimulus payment for all Americans. But this was also the year House Democrats discussed sending $2,000 checks to everyone every month for the duration of the pandemic and for a year after. In other words, the Universal Basic Income that Andrew Yang talked up in his quixotic presidential campaign came close to being a reality faster than anyone expected. 

A countrywide coalition of mayors aren't waiting, setting up pilot UBI projects in towns like Stockton, California. Now San Francisco's Board of Supervisors has voted to study a guaranteed income program. Brazil and Spain are instituting their own versions of basic payments. And there's more movement toward a true UBI around the planet in the wake of successful experiments in Finland and Kenya. Experts are just starting to study the results, but so far it looks like the exact reverse of trickle-down economics: Money floods upwards from the bottom, sloshes around the entire economy and lifts all boats. 

15. Black Lives Matter became the biggest mass movement in history.

The protests may have died down since the summer, but the widespread rage at racist policing remains. It may well return to the streets soon, when four former Minneapolis officers are actually put on trial for the death of George Floyd. (Jury selection is just getting started.) 

In the meantime, we can take heart from the sheer size of the mass movement it sparked, which was estimated as the largest in U.S. history — even in the middle of a pandemic. We can be proud of the fact that they were responsible, masked, non-superspreader events. And though progress is painfully slow, the movement has had a huge impact already. Police funding was slashed in Minneapolis, New York City, Los Angeles, Austin and Portland. Some of these efforts came through ballot measures in November, the most successful of which which flipped the script from the hot-button phrase "defund the police" to "invest in other services." 

16. We started a work-from-home revolution. 

A lot of genies were let out of bottles this year; one of the largest was the number of people who discovered they really don't need to be in the office to be productive. An estimated 3.4 percent of the U.S. workforce was allowed to work at home pre-pandemic, a number that had barely budged from 2.9 percent in 2015. Now, says one Stanford economist, it’s 42 percent. Despite what some office-loving managers might have expected, the sky did not fall. Indeed, without the commute getting in the way, people appear to be spending more time on their jobs, not less.  

The post-pandemic implications are huge. Many companies have realized they didn't need all that expensive office space. Many employees have realized they can work from anywhere; many families are spending this holiday season figuring out  where "anywhere" is. How it all shakes out in 2021 is anyone's guess, but a number of tech firms like Twitter have already announced their employees have the option to work from home forever. It seems unlikely that the number of work-from-homers will ever drop into single-digit percentages again. 

17. The internet passed its ultimate stress test. 

Of course, such a radical shift would not have been possible without apps like Zoom, Google Meet, FaceTime, Skype and the whole gang. More videoconferencing took place in 2020 than at any time in human history — for work and for socializing — and amazingly, with a few small exceptions, the infrastructure held up. It's a myth that the internet was designed to be decentralized in order to withstand a nuclear attack, but we now know for a fact that it can survive a global pandemic. 

Sure, Zoom fatigue is real. Sure, your home Wi-Fi may not always be able to handle the load of everyone online at once. But imagine for a moment that we all had to spend a year quarantining without being able to see and hear far-flung family and friends whenever you felt like it. And take a moment to thank the nerds who came up with complex concepts like packet switching and Voice over IP in the 20th century, knowing that one day it may provide your only link to the outside world. 

18. We sued Facebook and Google.

Even as it embraced the internet life, the U.S. took steps to punish its top companies for anti-competitive practices. The FTC and 48 states launched a suit against Facebook for using its monopoly power to snuff out its competition, shortly after the DOJ and 11 states sued Google for the same thing. 

Both suits had strong bipartisan support, which remains amazing at a time when the country can agree on little else. The fact that Facebook and Google emerged from a round of congressional hearings as the worst offenders, and that Apple, Amazon, and Twitter emerged largely unscathed, shows that authorities have learned a key lesson from those hearings: Not all big tech companies should be treated the same

19. We took historic small steps in space. 

Being stuck in our homes didn't mean that humanity had to stop exploring the heavens. This December, Japanese scientists successfully retrieved a pristine chunk of rock from an asteroid for the first time ever. (A previous mission fell at the last hurdle, delivering only a handful of dust). This is an important step not only in understanding our solar system, but in building an asteroid-mining industry that may be the driving economic force of the next century.  

And that was far from the only good space news of the year. NASA launched its own asteroid sample return mission. China and the U.S. both launched robot missions to Mars. Elon Musk's SpaceX also had a busy year, launching two crewed missions to the International Space Station while successfully testing its reusable launch system and putting in place a massive, super-fast satellite internet network for good measure. 

20. We avoided a Great Depression — for now. 

The situation looked dire in March and April, as the pandemic froze economic activity around the world. We saw one of the largest drops in GDP in U.S. history: more than 30 percent in one quarter. Millions of people were thrown out of work all at once. Predictions of another Great Depression were common; the only question seemed to be how long it would last. 

And then the rebound began. The unemployment rate slid back down to pre-pandemic levels, even as job growth slowed amid a surge of cases in December. The consensus among economists is that U.S. GDP will grow by more than 3 percent this quarter and next. That would basically bring the economy back to 2019 levels some time in 2021. We won't be able to erase all the harm coronavirus caused this year, but it's looking less likely to lead to a lost decade. 

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