The Weekly Anthropocene, March 5 2025
Snow leopards in Nepal, clean energy in Chile, Yanomami drone monitoring, electric drone crop dusters, the Niger Delta red colobus monkey, a bold new U.S. plug-in solar effort, and more!
Nepal
In recent years, the Himalayan nation of Nepal has produced a multitude of wildlife conservation success stories, including new models of elephant/human coexistence, a near-tripling of its tiger population in twelve years, a near-doubling of its forest cover since the 1990s, and an increasing one-horned rhino population.
Now, the country is turning its attention to its elusive snow leopards (Panthera uncia). An ongoing census indicates that Nepal has an estimated 300-500 snow leopards, and the nation leads the world in snow leopard research. A new, higher-budget snow leopard conservation plan is increasing the focus on helping farmers prevent conflict-sparking livestock losses to hungry snow leopards. Predator-proof metal corrals are going up, solar-powered deterrent lights are being deployed, and snow leopard spotters are being trained. Fascinating work!
Chile
Chile is experiencing an epic national clean energy revolution, lowering emissions and electricity prices while ensuring reliable sovereign power. The country installed a record-high 2.14 GW (2,140 MW) of solar in 2024, up sharply from 1.65 GW in 2023 and bringing the national total to 10.5 GW of solar capacity. Renewables are now providing over half of installed capacity and over 40% of electricity generation across the entire nation.
And they’re just getting started: Chile has 4.14 GW more of solar currently under construction, plus 3 GW of energy storage systems (e.g. grid batteries) operational or under construction and 42 GW more of solar and 15 GW more of energy storage projects trying to work their way through permitting! (Net Zero Notes has a great article with more background on Chile’s cleantech success). Brilliant work!
Coastal cities in northern Chile’s parched Atacama Desert are exploring fog farming as a new sustainable water supply, erecting stationary sails that can collect liters of water per day from foggy air without using electricity.
Svalbard
On the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, researchers have used remote cameras to capture humanity’s first-ever detailed footage of a polar bear (Ursus maritimus) mother and cubs emerging from their hidden den.
In February 2025, seeds from 19 different tree species growing across Africa were deposited in the incredible Svalbard Global Seed Vault, safeguarding their genetic heritage for the future. The vault now holds over 1.3 million seed samples from around the world, with room for many more.
Norway has tightened the rules against disturbing Svalbard’s wildlife, mandating limits on the closest permissible approach to polar bears, walruses, and more.
Brazil
The Yanomami people are at last beginning to recover from the genocidal violence inflicted by thousands of invading illegal miners, whose brutalities were actively supported by President Jair Bolsonaro from 2019 through 2022 but finally confronted by the Brazilian government in 2023 after the election of President Lula da Silva. Now, they’re developing a youth-led drone monitoring network to watch over and protect the indigenous territory they administer, a remote expanse of Amazon rainforest about the size of Portugal. Spectacular work!
Grid-scale battery storage is taking off across Brazil, with a record-high 269 MWh of new energy storage capacity installed in 2024 (up 29% from 2023). The Amazonian state of Pará is an emerging cleantech deployment hub, now home to tens of thousands of off-grid integrated solar-plus-battery systems.
Unmanned autonomous electric crop dusters are taking off across Latin America, reducing carbon emissions substantially while enabling more precise and limited application of dangerous pesticides. Brazil’s vast agricultural sector is an emerging leader in the farm-drone field, with new models allowed to operate by default and an order for 20 cutting-edge Pelican electric crop dusters recently placed by a Brazilian buyer.
Nigeria
The critically endangered Niger Delta red colobus monkey (Piliocolobus epieni), long one of the most imperiled primate species on Earth, has been pulled back from the brink of extinction thanks to years of work by devoted local conservationists. Their habitat in the river delta mangrove forests of Nigeria had been devastated by widespread crude oil spills and logging. By 2021, there were fewer than 200 red colobus monkeys left in the only remaining viable population — but in that same year, a community reserve was established to protect them, and now rough estimates indicate that as of 2025 that population has doubled!
Camera traps in the community conservation area recorded the first-ever videos of the species in December 2024, granting first-ever insights into these monkeys’ behavior.
“We snatched it out of extinction in the nick of time…
I think they [the local human community] are the superheroes in this story.”
— Rachel Ashegbofe Ikemeh, SW/Niger Delta Forest Project (SWNDF)
United States
Despite the escalating depravity of the disgusting gangsters currently in control of the U.S. executive branch1, people across America still strive to build a brighter future.
The Energy Information Administration’s latest estimate predicts that as in 2024, renewables will account for the overwhelming majority of new utility-scale electricity-generating capacity set to come online across America in 2025. Solar is set to provide 52% of new capacity, batteries 29%, and wind 12%, with all renewables together providing over 90% of a record-high 63 GW of new capacity planned to come online!
The EIA also forecasts that coal plant retirements will increase to 8.1 GW in 2025!
Even as many other duly allocated funds remain in chaos, it looks like ongoing pressure has finally reversed at least a part of the current administration’s illegal freeze on some EPA-administered Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law grant funding. Hopeful reports are trickling in from across the country, with school districts reporting that they can access funds for electric school buses and state leaders accessing funds for low-income solar deployment, building electrification, and more. At last, a little law around here!
Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro reports that after suing the current administration, $2.1 billion of illegally frozen federal funds have been made accessible to the state of Pennsylvania. That funding will do lots of vital work including cleaning drinking water, plugging abandoned oil & gas wells, building out clean electricity, and securing abandoned mines. A win for law and order: great news!
A brand-new climate action nonprofit is trying to kickstart a plug-in “backyard solar” revolution in America to match the highly successful European example. Bright Saver is offering an unprecedented business model: they plan to deliver and install a plug-in solar array for any client (including renters, not just homeowners!), and then lease it to them for just a $29 per month subscription. The plug-in solar array becomes the client’s at the end of six years, and if for any of the months in that six-year period the plug-in solar array does not save more than $29 on electric bills, Bright Saver will reimburse the client for that month.
This is in the earliest of early days: Bright Saver just bought their first 100 plug-in solar arrays from leading U.S. supplier Craftstrom, and those will be only available in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, where they’re physically located. For a successful proof-of-concept to take this model nationwide, they need two things in the upcoming months: 100 people living (or renting!) in the Bay Area to sign up as clients and get those first plug-in solar arrays, and as many people as possible across America to sign up for their waitlist to show potential funders that the nationwide demand for plug-in solar is there.
Anyone living or renting in the U.S. can sign up for the waitlist with the General Inquiry form on the right of their Contact page, and anyone living or renting in the Bay Area can move towards getting their essentially-free plug-in solar array by booking a consultation at the green button on the left!
If plug-in solar can become a working proposition in America sooner rather than later, it could unleash a luminous wave of liberatory clean energy that even the current regime might find difficult to slow down. Let’s help make this happen2!
The new JetWind company has installed first-ever energy capturing pods (ECPs) at an airport in Dallas, Texas, converting the wind from aircraft takeoffs into energy.
Illinois is mulling a much-needed boldly ambitious state-level clean grid plan, with a bill before the legislature that would accelerate gigawatts of new energy storage, virtual power plants, grid-enhancing technologies. A model for the nation!
A Seattle medical research institute has invented the revolutionary new PfSPZ-LARC2 malaria vaccine, which uses genetically weakened malaria parasites to catalyze human bodies into safely developing immunity with just one dose. Taken in addition to the two new malaria vaccines humanity already has and is working to deploy, this could supercharge mass life-saving across Africa! Excellent news.
A new study reports resounding success for oyster restoration efforts in the Rappahannock River of Virginia, rebuilding water-filtering food-producing reefs!
Scientists report that a new species of “Midsummer” tiger swallowtail butterfly (Papilio solstitius) appears to have emerged in eastern North America, a self-sustaining population of hybrids between the previously known Canadian tiger swallowtail (Papilio canadensis) and Eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus). Awesome!
The Texas city of Sugar Land is working to build out two new forms of electric public transport that should be relatively easy to fit into existing car-based urban layouts: self-flying VTOL electric air taxis with startup Wisk Aero and a possible gondola-style elevated cable car system. Bold ambitions: here’s hoping they pull it off!
The horrific impacts of this destructive chaos on the PEPFAR program, one of the noblest things any government has ever done and one of the most cost-effective methods of saving human lives in history, are alone (in this writer’s personal opinion) sufficient grounds for impeachment, removal, and life imprisonment of the current president and associates.
To be 100% clear, this newsletter is not getting paid by or receiving any benefits from Bright Saver (they’ve just started and are hoping to raise enough money to stay alive!)— this is just a REALLY exciting new idea to rapidly scale up solar in America that’s at a critical viability point right now. Let’s make it happen!
I hope the governor of Pennsylvania is compensated for his attorneys fees as well.