Good news you might have missed in 2020

Believe it or not, some good things did actually happen in 2020. Here are some of the positives from the year of the COVID plague.

Worst. Year. Ever.

Well, technically it might have some competition – 1939 and the years immediately after it spring to mind – but nobody would deny 2020 has been a shocker.

Events both close to home and overseas kept us glued to the headlines or doomscrolling social media. But even in such a bleak year, good things happened. Science and society advanced, and even the wretched coronavirus had upsides.

Here are some of the good news stories you may have missed in 2020.

THE ULTIMATE SURVIVORS

Aussies love going for the little guy, excuse the sexism, and there could be no better example than the miraculous survival of some native species after the devastating bushfires of late 2019 and early 2020.

Sydney University Professor Chris Dickman, who estimated in January that one billion individual animals may have perished in the bushfires, said there were some encouraging signs for a few species – although as Covid restrictions meant proper surveys were only picking up now, it would be several months before we would know for sure.

A Kangaroo Island dunnart using a shelter tunnel after the bushfires. Picture: Facebook/Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife

“The signs are looking pretty good for the Kangaroo Island dunnart, and there are pockets of the Kangaroo Island glossy black cockatoos as well,” Prof Dickman told News Corp Australia.

“Photos have begun to turn up of the long-footed potoroo in East Gippsland, and of course koalas have persisted in many areas near burnt forests, although survival in the severely burnt areas is minimal to zero.”

WWF-Australia and state environment departments have been deploying high-tech equipment to detect survivors, and when a sensor camera picked up a dunnart on Kangaroo Island in June, after more than 90 per cent of its natural habitat burned, it was cause for exultation.

CARBON EMISSIONS CURBED

Earth is healing? Yeah, nah. But the worldwide economic turndown did lead to significant drops in carbon emissions in 2020.

The CSIRO estimated the global decline to be about 7 per cent, with America’s contribution down 12 per cent, the European Union’s down 11 per cent and Australia’s down 6.7 per cent.

The bad news is that came on the back of 2019, yet another record year for global emissions, and the economic rebound expected as the world comes out of Covid will likely wipe out the emissions savings we made this year.

Venice seen from above, during (above) and before (below) the COVID-19 lockdown. Picture: AFP / Planet Labs

WOMEN MAKE STRIDES

The world continued to wake up to the fact that women constitute 50 per cent of the species and deserve an equal say in what’s going on.

A United Nations report in October revealed women now hold 25 per cent of parliamentary seats worldwide, and 20 countries now have a female head of state or government, up from 12 in 1995.

The election of Kamala Harris as America’s first female vice-president in November was another milestone.

In Australia’s federal parliament, the Senate hit gender parity for the first time in 2019, and 30 per cent of lower house MPs are women. But we don’t have to look far to find one of the worst performers in terms of women’s political representation: the 111-seat parliament of Papua New Guinea currently has no female MPs.

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. While her election to the Vice-Presidency is a first in itself, the office could set her up for a run at the presidency in 2024. Picture: Joshua Roberts/Getty Images/AFP

WOMEN SET FOR ONE GIANT LEAP

Continuing the theme of female empowerment, NASA presaged one giant leap for womankind in September when it revealed details of its Artemis program, including putting a woman on the lunar surface in 2024.

The US space agency plans to send up a crewless test flight around the Moon in 2021, followed by a staffed mission in 2023.

It will also land robots on the moon using commercial space partners twice a year, starting in 2021.

Men made it to the moon in 1969 (including Apollo 11 astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, above) but NASA has revealed its plans to put a women in the moon as part of its Artemis program in 2023. Picture: NASA/AFP

NASA’s plans for the Artemis mission involve astronauts of both genders being on the moon for nearly seven days – more than double the duration of the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972, when two astronauts spent a little over three days on the lunar surface (the existing record).

The Artemis astronauts will search for (and potentially extract) resources such as water beneath the lunar surface.

“We’re going back to the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “As we build up a sustainable presence, we’re also building momentum toward those first human steps on the Red Planet.”

THE GENE GENIES

The revolutionary-editing technique CRISPR, which allows specific genes to be removed from cells, went from theory to practical application in 2020.

Although the results have yet to be announced, US scientists used the technique in March to treat a patient with an inherited form of blindness, and in December US and German scientists revealed they had successfully treated two patients with inherited blood diseases.

Joe Milton from the Australian science Media Centre said the possible future applications of CRISPR were enormous.

2020 was an incredible year for science, with the successful delivery of a COVID-19 vaccine, and enormous achievements in gened editing technology.

“Anything that’s genetic could be targeted using these techniques,” Mr Milton said.

Even conditions such as alcoholism and schizophrenia could one day be treated using CRISPR, he said, although he cautioned this would be enormously complicated because they were governed by the interplay of many genes. The genetic component of many diseases constituted only part of the risk of developing it, he added, so just removing those genes might not eliminate them entirely.

But if those American scientists do reveal they have cured hereditary blindness, it will be an advance that some will call “miraculous”.

AUSSIE INTERNET BREAKTHROUGH

Some would call this miraculous too, given Australia’s notoriously clunky NBN, but researchers from Monash, Swinburne and RMIT universities recorded the world’s fastest internet speed in May – so quick it could download 1000 high definition movies in a split second.

The researchers laid 76.6km of ‘dark’ optical fibres between RMIT’s Melbourne Campus and Monash University’s Clayton Campus, and with the help of a device called a “micro-comb”, they achieved a data speed of 44.2 Terabits per second.

A supplied image of a "micro-comb", a device used by Australian researchers to create the fastest internet speed ever recorded. Picture: AAP Image/Dr Bill Corcoran

Professor David Moss from Swinburne said micro-combs “offer enormous promise for us to meet the world’s insatiable demand for bandwidth.”

Dr Bill Corcoran from Monash said the research also showed that the NBN optic fibres could “be the backbone of communications networks now and in the future”.

“And it’s not just Netflix we’re talking about here,” Dr Corcoran said.

“This data can be used for self-driving cars and future transportation and it can help the medicine, education, finance and e-commerce industries, as well as enable us to read with our grandchildren from kilometres away.”

WE GOT RICHER (GENERALLY)

Thousands of Australians lost their jobs, but total household wealth increased 1.7 per cent to a record high of $11,351 billion in 2020, according to the ABS.

Increases in residential assets (1.2 per cent), deposits (5.4 per cent), and our superannuation accounts (1.1 per cent) were the main contributors to the growth in household wealth.

Average household wealth increased 1.6 per cent (up $6850) to $441,649 per person in the September quarter, similar to the growth of 1.5 per cent recorded in the June quarter.

And while some property owners suffered a loss in the June quarter, there was growth in the September quarter, with the value of our collective residential assets rising by $86.8 billion. It may not be good news for first home buyers, but the property market’s remarkable resilience to the effects of COVID-19 was a welcome development for the two-thirds of Australian households who have bought (or are paying off) their own home.