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3 days ago | 
sammatey.substack.com | Sam Matey
Oxford University Press has published a milestone new paper discussing the worldwide emergence of urban rewilding, a longtime theme of this newsletter.
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5 days ago | 
sammatey.substack.com | Sam Matey
Aptech Africa, founded by two brothers from Eritrea in 2011, has overcome extraordinary challenges to become a leading African solar installer and a profitable, fast-expanding multinational company. Their main office is in Kampala, Uganda, and they have installed solar projects in 31 countries and counting. Metkel Zerai Abraham is a co-founder and the current CEO of Aptech Africa.
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1 week ago | 
sammatey.substack.com | Sam Matey
In a world-historic step forward, May 2025 saw 124 member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) vote to adopt the WHO Pandemic Agreement, a new legally binding treaty to improve international coordination on planning for and responding to any future pandemics. (The U.S. is in the process of leaving the WHO, since January 2025, and did not join the new treaty).
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1 week ago | 
sammatey.substack.com | Sam Matey
This is my fifth article based on in-person reporting from Mesoamerica. I completed that three-month trip in early May 2025, but I’m still writing irregular articles about some of the fascinating people, wildlife, technology, and ecosystems I was lucky enough to see!On May 2, 2025, I visited the BYD dealership in the Mexico City borough of Iztacalco.
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2 weeks ago | 
sammatey.substack.com | Sam Matey
A landmark new studyfrom Germany has made great strides in quantifying the conservation paradox, an increasingly common Anthropocene situation where a wild creature is endangered in its native homeland but is simultaneously considered introduced or “invasive” in some other part of the world.
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3 weeks 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.
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4 weeks 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!
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1 month 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.
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1 month ago | 
sammatey.substack.com | Sam Matey
This is my fourth article based on in-person reporting from Mesoamerica.
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1 month 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.