It’s so incredibly easy to despair these days. Corruption and greed seem to have a firm grip on humanity, with the wealthy and powerful becoming increasingly more aggressive in order to become wealthier and more powerful, with blatant disregard for those “beneath” them and for the planet.

And yet, if you pay attention, there are very regular signs that progress, however slow it might seem, is happening.

Better yet, without any data to back this up, it seems to me that we may have reached a tipping point.

If, like me, you’ve retreated from the relentless bad news in the mainstream media and have sought out information sources that look for positive developments — GreenBiz, Inhabitat, Ode Magazine, Yes Magazine, just to name a few — you have a much better chance of finding glimmers of hope.

True, a lot of the good news comes from underfunded individuals or small groups tackling HUGE problems like poverty, disease, environmental destruction, civil rights, etc., but let’s not forget our Margaret Mead, that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.

In addition, and getting to my claim of having reached a tipping point, bigger groups of people, namely HUGE companies, are increasingly making efforts, large and small, to respond to the global climate change crisis. I wrote back in October about Frito Lay introducing compostable bags for their Sun Chips snack (however snarkily) and Google working on an auto-pilot car that they claim could reduce fuel consumption and land use for parking (snarkified by me as well). Yes, there were problems with both, but something is far better than nothing.

And then, just over a week ago, I wrote about the Ford Motor Company having unveiled its Focus Electric, which, as I mentioned, compared to the hybrid Chevy Volt, is a huge step forward for mass-produced zero emissions vehicles.

And check this out, in the past two days, Inhabitat has reported on sustainability efforts by giants, PepsiCo, FedEx, and Nike.

Cynics will of course paint these as self-serving greenwashing efforts, and I’ve no doubt that there is a lot of that going on all over the place. However, I’m tired of cynicism and we will get nowhere if these efforts by big business go unappreciated.

If we are to achieve the kind of sustainable economic growth harnessed to social needs that I wrote about yesterday, it will take cooperation and quid pro quo.

We should be celebrating these efforts in order to encourage more.