The Weekly Anthropocene, November 5 2025
PEAK EXTINCTION, little blue penguins, cyclone resilience in Bangladesh, Jetten's D66, Nigerian solar and GMO success, Bakairi firefighters, the Pathfinder 1 airship, ambitious armadillos, and more!
The Big Picture: Peak Extinction?!
A landmark new study has calculated that recorded extinctions of plant, arthropod, and land vertebrate animal species peaked about 100 years ago, and that the rate of extinctions in those three groups has been decreasing in recent decades, concurrent with unprecedented human effort towards wildlife conservation. It looks like so far, we are not on track for escalation towards a sixth mass extinction after all! This is a great high-level quantification of what this newsletter has been suspecting after reporting on dozens and dozens of conservation turnarounds bringing species back from the edge of extinction. Even as the climate destabilizes, human action towards our imperiled cousins is shifting from “banish and kill” to “protect and uplift.” A great step towards a good Anthropocene! Here’s a free PDF from one of the authors.
“We show that extinction rates are not getting faster towards the present, as many people claim, but instead peaked many decades ago…
Many people are working hard to keep species from going extinct. And we have evidence from other studies that investing money in conservation actually works.”
Australia
St. Kilda, an inner suburb of the city of Melbourne, is now home to a thriving colony of little blue penguins (Eudyptula minor), first established in 1956 on a breakwater built for the Melbourne Olympic Games. The colony population has grown from 57 in 1986 to over 1,400 penguins today, and they’ve become a popular urban wildlife tourism spot, with free guided tours and a newly built viewing platform. Another great example of human/wildlife coexistence in Anthropocene cities — awesome news!
The Jillaga ash (Eucalyptus stenostoma) is an endangered tree species that can live up to 400 years, native to a small patch of remote New South Wales highlands. Its population was devastated by the Black Summer wildfires of 2019-20, but its future is now looking brighter thanks to an amazing act of derring-do. A team of three recently abseiled 90 meters down a never-before-descended 300-meter cliff face in Wadbilliga National Park, collecting gumnuts from four surviving Jillaga ash trees. They will be used to grow a backup population. Biodiversity swashbucklers rock! Awesome news.
Australian national grid operator AEMO reports that wholesale electricity prices (the cost of generating power in Australia) have fallen 27% year-on-year in Q3 2025 thanks to record highs in clean energy and battery storage! This is expected to soon flow through to lower electricity bills for households, and long-term modelling suggests 50% cheaper energy bills by 2050. The electrotech revolution keeps progressing!
Bangladesh
Ever-excellent Our World in Data has made a magnificent new chart showcasing what has long been one of this writer’s most cherished reasons for climate optimism: the experience of Bangladesh from the 1970s through 2020s. Even as the strength of the cyclones hitting Bangladesh has increased, deaths due to cyclones have massively decreased thanks to incredible work developing weather forecasting and a national early warning and shelter system! From 300,000 deaths by a Category 3 cyclone in 1970 (causing a war!), to 138,000 deaths caused by a Category 4 cyclone in 1991, to less than 200 deaths each (orders of magnitude less!) from multiple Category 4 and 5 cyclones since 2007. Absolutely spectacular news, a model for the developing world.
I would bet on much worse storms on Earth in 2050, but fewer people dying from them.
Netherlands
Dutch company Wattlab successfully deployed 44 seawater-resistant Solar Flatracks on the diesel-electric cargo ship Vertom Tula in a single day at port. The arrays can be rapidly stacked and stored in one shipping container to free up cargo space when needed, and early tests show they meaningfully reduce CO2 emissions. Great work!
In the Netherlands, an EU-supported consortium of universities and corporations is developing a world-first program to empower farmers by integrating no-kill cultivated meat production with existing agricultural businesses. AWESOME!
The Netherlands held an election on October 29, 2025 in which centrist-liberals D66 unexpectedly defeated the far-right PVV. After coalition talks, inspiring D66 leader Rob Jetten, known for pro-climate action and pro-housing buildout policies, will likely be the youngest and first gay Prime Minister in Dutch history. Excellent news!
Nigeria
Growing genetically modified crops is helping feed Nigeria in the age of climate change! Cleverely engineered strains like pest-resistant Bt cowpeas and Bt cotton have reduced insecticide spraying while raising yields, while pest and drought-resistant TELA maize is providing higher yields while enduring hot and dry spells. Trials are underway for a nutrient-enriched GM cassava to fight childhood stunting due to deficiencies. Genetic engineering is an incredible tool1 for human progress!
“The farmers were so excited when they saw the outcome…
There was a three-week drought when everything else died, and the TELA maize just stayed there.”
Solar power is reportedly beginning to spread rapidly in Nigeria, a growing nation of over 220 million people currently hobbled by both its absolutely terrible grid and the unpleasant alternative of expensive and polluting diesel generators. Here’s hoping for a Pakistan-level takeoff in the near future, helping uplift one of the “Big 5” giants!
Nigeria’s Parliament passed a new anti-wildlife trafficking law, among the toughest in West Africa. Enforcement will be difficult, but it’s a great step in the right direction!
United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates has begun construction of what will likely be the world’s largest integrated solar plus battery storage project (a very fast-changing accolade!) when fully operational in 2027. The project, by state-owned developer Masdar, includes 5.2 GW (5,200 MW!) of solar plus a 19 GWh battery system, together ensuring 24/7 round the clock power from our local star. Spectacular work!
Brazil
In the aftermath of wildfires in 2018, the Bakairi people of the Cerrado savanna region in Brazil have formed a community firefighter brigade to prevent future major fires in their Santana Indigenous Territory, located in Mato Grosso state. Of the 45 trained volunteers, 25 are women, with an age range from teenagers to grandmothers. Their unpaid efforts include clearing dry brush, quashing flare-ups, and multi-day journeys away from home, and it’s paying off: their territory has seen no major fires for four years despite concurrent high risk across the Cerrado. Spectacular work!
United States
Despite the despicable, disgusting, cruel, moronic, cowardly and bullying wannabe-king loser in the White House, people across America keep building a better future!
The Pathfinder 1 craft, built by Google founder Sergey Brin’s LTA Research company, is the biggest lighter-than-air airship built on Earth since the Hindenburg. It flew over San Francisco on October 28, producing striking visuals. As previously reported by this newsletter in 2023, Pathfinder 1 is 124 meters long (substantially bigger than a jumbo jet!) with a titanium and carbon fiber frame. It’s a hybrid, with twelve electric motors powered by two diesel generators and 24 batteries. And, of course, it uses non-flammable helium as its lifting gas instead of dangerous hydrogen. One amazing potential future application for this tech is disaster relief — this thing can stay airborne without burning power, so it could be tethered above a crisis-hit area as an instant comms and aid center. The Pathfinder 3 is being built in Ohio. In an electrotech future, there might be blimps! Beautiful, and absolutely AWESOME news!
ERCOT, the grid covering most of Texas, got 36% of its electricity generation (not capacity!) from wind and solar combined in the first nine months of 2025! Solar generation increased by a whopping 50% year-on-year from the first nine months of 2025, as natural gas fell from 47% to 43% of generation over the same period.
Dynamic electrification nonprofit Bright Saver (friends of this newsletter!) have published a landmark new white paper modelling the vast potential benefits of deploying plug-in solar across America. Among other headline results, they estimate that rooftop solar is currently inaccessible to 70% of Americans due to cost, roof constraints, or renter status — much-cheaper plug-in solar could unleash a massive new wave of decentralized, independent, and clean home electrification! Relatedly, Bright Saver tells me that Utah-style bills deregulating plug-in solar (to make it easy to bring home and install Germany-style without masses of paperwork) are set to be introduced next state legislative session in Vermont, Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, and Maryland — so far! The opportunity is immense. Here’s an action I wrote to contact your state legislators on this, and here’s the full whitepaper!
You may have heard that the current White House decided to open the majestic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska to oil drilling. However, despite the dramatic environment-bashing of the announcement, this is likely to mean very little on the ground, as not a single oil company has shown interest. It’s super expensive to drill in the Arctic and global demand for their product keeps declining! The state government of Alaska remains the only holder of drilling leases in the refuge, and they would have to spend millions of taxpayer dollars just to build a road to get to those Arctic drilling sites…where it’s now unprofitable to drill. Ha!
Armadillos are doing amazingly well in Anthropocene America. A new study reports that as temperatures keep rising, the nine-banded armadillo2 has expanded its range northwards into the United States faster and farther than was previously thought possible for the species. Armadillos are now well-established in seventeen U.S. states and occasionally seen in four more, with substantial potential for future expansion.
Check out the studies on the horrific results of activist campaigns opposing the spread of genetically modified golden rice, vitamin A fortified rice in South Asia. Slowing that down and stopping it in some places probably added up to millions of life-years lost in India alone. From anti-vaxxers to anti-GMOs to anti-renewables folks, rejection of widely accepted and carefully evaluated scientific progress has a powerful intuitive appeal to a lot of people, but often causes horrific outcomes. Reality tends to exert a strong pull in the end.
Fun fact: every nine-banded armadillo litter is made up of four genetically identical quadruplets. Another fun fact: armadillos can hold their breath and walk underwater for minutes at a time.
I was sure from the photo that was the St Kilda penguins, glad to see I was able to recognise them on site, they are delightful little creatures, and saves Melbournians the 2 hour drive down to Philip Island if they want to see Penguins.
Though, that drive to Philip Island is still worth it, the little champs all come back to this one beach at the same time every night, like a bunch of people coming home from work and piling off the train/ferry, pretty sure its still there but there used to be a viewing area with like stadium seating where you could go each evening and watch them all coming 'home'
So yeah the St Kilda penguins are great news, but don't forget to check out Philip Island if you are ever in Melbourne
Love it that you picked up the Sabans & Wiens paper. It doesn't quite tie in with what I see on abundance, but whenever I go looking I find species that have never been seen in my area. They turn up one by one, and since they are usually ants, or beetles, or perhaps bugs, they are only found by people who go looking. I live in dairy country, so I welcome every solar farm as a chance to take the desert that is intensively gazed semi-improved grassland and convert it into a mixed sward of whatever chooses to take over at ground level.