'Game of Thrones' author George RR Martin laments news of 'death, death and more death' in 2016 https://t.co/DjHuGE0SnZ pic.twitter.com/NOUPRFNJsZ
— Michiko Kakutani (@michikokakutani) December 30, 2016
On the other hand, BuzzFeed has a list of “16 Things That Happened In 2016 That Will Actually Cheer You Up“:
1. Half the world became free of war.
In September, the Colombian government signed a pact with FARC, the communist rebels with whom it had been fighting a bitter civil war for 52 years. That war was the last one in the Western hemisphere – there are now no active conflicts anywhere in the entire half of the world west of Greenwich…3. The hole in the ozone layer has shown signs of healing for the first time…
6. Malaria is on the wane worldwide…
11. The number of AIDS deaths was way down…
14. Global carbon dioxide emissions have stopped going up.
They’ve stayed steady for the last two years, after going up an average of 3.5% a year during the 2000s.It’s a product of a growing reliance on renewable energy and much slower growth in coal and oil use. We’re still pumping huge amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into in our atmosphere, and the stuff that’s already there will hang around. But if you were optimistic, you could see this as the peak; maybe emissions will start to drop…
Onward we trudge, one starfish at a time.
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What’s on the agenda as we start the Wrap-Up-2016 Weekend?