A few reasons to feel hopeful about the climate in 2026
This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.
2025 was a brutal year for the climate: record temperatures, ever more extreme weather and so on. We rarely got a break from the bad news.
This week, rather than saying what’s going wrong, Imagine is looking at what’s starting to go right – and why it matters.
This isn’t blind faith. It’s what some academics call “grounded optimism”, based on data, momentum and the surprising resilience of people and ecosystems.
A positive tipping point?
We rightly spend a lot of time worrying about climate tipping points – the terrifying thresholds beyond which ecosystems collapse. Earlier this week we looked at the prospects of a sudden collapse in coral reefs, for instance.
But we rarely hear about “positive tipping points”. These are the moments when a sustainable technology or action becomes so affordable or popular that it kickstarts “irreversible, self-propelling change”.
The UK may have just passed one (tipping points, as the coral reefs author notes, are best noticed in hindsight). That’s according to Kai Greenlees and Steven R. Smith of the University of Exeter, who say the electric vehicle market is an example of a positive tipping point in action.
Despite misinformation campaigns, sales have surged in the UK, driven by a simple reality: they are getting cheaper and better.
“The more people buy them”, Greenlees and Smith write, “the cheaper and better they get, which makes even more people buy them – a self-propelling change towards a low-carbon road transport system.”
At the time of writing, the authors only had access to 2024 data, when electric vehicles made up 19.6% of new cars in the UK.
That figure, they wrote, “puts this sector close to the critical 20-25% range for triggering the phase of self-propelling adoption, according to positive tipping points theory”.
Data for 2025 UK sales was released on Tuesday. The share of electric vehicles? 23.4%.
Read more: UK may be on verge of triggering a 'positive tipping point' for tackling climate change
From crisis to innovation
In Pakistan, solar is booming – not because of climate pledges, or activist pressure, but because the grid has become expensive and unreliable. Something similar is playing out across south Asia, says Reihana Mohideen of the University of Melbourne.
Mohideen writes:
“Importantly, these moves often aren’t about climate change. Reasons range from cutting dependence on expensive fossil fuels and international market volatility to reducing reliance on unreliable power grids to finding ways to boost livelihoods.”
The world recently passed a massive milestone: renewables have finally overtaken coal to become the world’s leading source of electricity. And some of the most exciting developments are taking place in less wealthy economies.
Whether it’s Nepal moving to electric vehicles to stop relying on imported petrol or the Maldives installing solar because diesel is too expensive to ship to outer islands, Mohideen says the result is the same: clean energy is no longer just for rich nations. It is becoming a logical economic choice everywhere.
Read more: Renewables have now passed coal globally – and growth is fastest in countries like Bhutan and Nepal
China doubles down
We can’t talk about global hope without considering the world’s largest emitter.
This newsletter has noted before the confusing paradox of China fast rolling out green technologies while still burning a colossal amount of coal to keep the lights on.
In an article on China’s five green economy challenges in 2026, Chee Meng Tan of the University of Nottingham notes the country’s grid can’t quite handle all the new solar power, while a cut-throat price war threatens progress on electric vehicles.
But Beijing is doubling down on greening its economy, he says, and still aims to achieve “‘carbon peaking’, where carbon dioxide emissions have reached a ceiling by 2030, and ‘carbon neutrality’, where net carbon dioxide emissions have been driven down to zero by 2060.”
The challenges Tan identifies will need to be overcome. But the sheer scale of investment suggests that in China the momentum is now undeniably pointed towards a low-carbon future.
Read more: China's five green economy challenges in 2026
Where the wild things thrive
Finally, some good news for climate-threatened ecosystems.
It’s easy to assume that global warming hits everywhere equally. But nature isn’t that simple. Researchers working in east Africa and California’s Sierra Nevada mountains have identified what they call “climate change refugia”.
These are specific pockets of resilience that remain buffered from the worst effects of warming. They can be quite small scale: a shaded meadow, a deep lake, or a valley that harbours cool air.
Toni Lyn Morelli of UMass Amherst and Diana Stralberg of the University of Alberta have written about their work identifying and mapping these safe havens. Their work means conservationists can prioritise protecting the specific meadows where ground squirrels can survive, or the corridors in Tanzania where elephants and lions can find enough water to endure a drought.
Morelli and Stralberg say that by “identifying and protecting the places where species can survive the longest, we can buy crucial decades for ecosystems”.
Read more: Where the wild things thrive: Finding and protecting nature's climate change safe havens
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