If you keep innovators in view, it’s hard not to feel at least a little optimistic.

I recently wrote in this space about a teen inventor in Florida who’s developing motors for electric vehicles that don’t rely on the extraction of rare-earth elements. 

Now comes news that some Dutch students – with an eye to the carbon dioxide emitted in an EV’s entire lifespan, from manufacturing to recycling – have developed a prototype that can capture more carbon than it emits. 

“They imagine a future,” Reuters reports, “when filters can be emptied at charging stations.”

Separately, in Amsterdam, autonomous boats roam, scooping river trash. In Portland, Oregon, ​​Disaster Relief Trials train the riders of electric cargo bikes to deliver messages and supplies should a natural disaster break the city’s infrastructure.

Regions that lack communications infrastructure to begin with may get help from a U.S. startup making backpack-size solar-powered “cellular base stations” – essentially independent internet service providers. A pilot project is planned in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

And in response to deepening drought, a “modular” approach to seawater desalination was approved last week by California regulators. It will supply a small water utility south of Los Angeles. It passed muster with many environmentalists who’d opposed a larger private effort because of its projected effects.

“This could be replicated … up and down the coast,” an environmental scientist told Yahoo News.

Small steps, big ideas. All face hurdles and course corrections. All spring from daring to hope.