As this week's happy example, I offer the new global agreement on POPs, plus Sweden's even better policy on the same topic.
POPs is the hot new acronym for Persistent Organic Pollutants.
They are human-made, new to the planet. Few life forms know how to break them down. Furthermore most POPs contain strong chlorine-carbon bonds that tend to make them stable even in cold, heat, and sunlight. That stability renders them handy for industry and real hard to clean out of ecosystems. On December 10 in Johannesburg the first global agreement on POPs was successfully negotiated.