Sam Matey

3 days ago | sammatey.substack.com | Sam Matey

I’m Sam Matey, writer of The Weekly Anthropocene. I travel a heck of a lot these days, but my home is the U.S. state of Maine. And as I’ve written before, I have long been a huge fan of the incumbent Governor of Maine, Janet Mills. In 2018, I first met then-Attorney General Mills in person at a protest in Augusta calling (unsuccessfully, as it would turn out) for Senator Susan Collins to vote against Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

6 days ago | sammatey.substack.com | Sam Matey

The first Monthly Dose of Climate Hope live event took place on May 7, 2025! Sam Matey hosted an in-depth conversation with environmental economist Dr. Sugandha Srivastav of Oxford, with a focus on real-world case studies of successful rapid transition to renewable energy. The YouTube recording is above, and below are embedded several relevant articles from Dr. Srivastav’s Substack Net Zero Notes!

1 week ago | sammatey.substack.com | Sam Matey

In 2024, clean energy (renewables plus nuclear) accounted for over90% of all new electricity-generating capacity built by human civilization anywhere on Earth — a new record high. Over 585 GW of new clean energy capacity was built last year, (three-quarters of which was solar!) compared to just 47 GW of new non-renewables capacity, including all fossil fuels. Clean energy now provides around 40% of global electricity, and that share is very likely to keep rising.

1 week ago | sammatey.substack.com | Sam Matey

This is my fourth article based on in-person reporting from Mesoamerica.

2 weeks ago | sammatey.substack.com | Sam Matey

A landmark new study has calculated that agrivoltaics, the growing of crops under solar panels, is suitable for a very large chunk of all existing farmland across Earth’s surface. Their headline result is that about 22% to 35% of rain-fed harvested area globally would likely continue their current crop yields if solar panels were added, with the agrivoltaic setup helping to reduce water stress by protecting the crops from heat.