January 2026 Update

01/23/26 UPDATE       

Re: Chapter 11.3 SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS: ACTION VERSUS "GREENWASHING"

As the new year unfolds, there is bad news along with the good.

While much of the world is rapidly transitioning to renewable energy (see the 1/19/26 update), the NY Times reports that all the brave Wall Street promises to fight global warming made in 2020 have now collapsed. In 2020, the chief executive of BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, declared that he intended to use the trillions of dollars managed by his firm to address global warming. But now he is welcoming President Trump to the World Economic Forum where climate issues have taken a back seat. (As noted on p. 203 of Earth Wise, the former BlackRock chief of sustainable investing resigned in 2022 because he thought the promises were “a dangerous placebo that harms the public interest”.) Many companies never really changed their practices (“greenwashing”), and others have reinvested in fossil fuel projects favored by the Trump administration.

01/19/26 UPDATE       

Re: Chapter 3.5D A RACE AGAINST TIME

Science Magazine has chosen the unstoppable rise of renewable energy as its “breakthrough of the year.”¹ Renewable energy surpassed coal as a source of electricity worldwide in 2025, while solar and wind energy accounted for the entire increase in global energy use. There was no growth in fossil fuel electricity despite growing electricity demand.² The rise of solar and wind energy is driven by Chinese manufacturing. The world's solar cells and wind turbines are 80% and 70%, respectively, made in China.

The current US government resolutely opposes renewable energy projects while promoting fossil fuels. For example, the Trump administration suspended all off-shore wind projects under construction late in 2025.³  Despite this, solar and wind filled 91% of new US electricity generating capacity in the first half of 2025.²

Meanwhile, China is carpeting the high-altitude plain of Tibet with solar panels and wind turbines to capture its bright sun and high winds. The Talatan Solar Park dwarfs any other solar installation in the world. It is still adding panels and is expected to grow to ten times the area of Manhattan in three years⁴. 

The rising importance of solar and wind energy is documented in Bill McKibbens new book “Here Comes the Sun.”

1.  https://www.science.org/content/article/breakthrough-2025

2.  https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/solar-and-wind-growth-meets-all-new-electricity-demand-in-the-first-three-quarters-of-2025

3.  https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/22/climate/trump-offshore-wind-suspension-virginia

4.  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/business/china-solar-tibetan-plateau.html

01/09/26 UPDATE       

Re: Chapter 9.2 WOLVES AND BIODIVERSITY IN YELLOWSTONE PARK

Another benefit of wolves’ reintroduction into Yellowstone National Park, reported in 2021 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, is the reduction of deer-vehicle collisions. 

Since their reintroduction, wolves are expanding their range in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota. They are reducing the deer population, helping to preserve the forests from deer predation. But also they are reducing deer-car collisions because they hunt along the roadways, creating a “landscape of fear”, and driving deer away from roads. Collisions dropped by 24% in Wisconsin counties that wolves re-entered. The cost savings were estimated to be 63 times greater than the costs of livestock predation by the wolves.

01/02/26 UPDATE

Re: Chapter 6.4. WHAT ABOUT THE OZONE HOLE?

The new year brings the welcome news that the international agreements to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals are working. The ozone hole over Antarctica continues to heal. Satellite measurements in the Antarctic stratosphere show that the extent of ozone loss was lower in 2024 and 2025 than in 2020-2023 (see the update of Figure 39 below). The hole is expected to heal completely later in the century.

UPDATED FIGURE 39, showing the change in the ozone hole area during the Antarctic spring, with added time points for 2024 and 2025 (in red), from the NASA Ozone Watch website.

2025 Updates

12/05/25 UPDATE              

Re: Chapter 8.3. DOES EVERYTHING CAUSE CANCER?

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Initial printings of EARTH WISE have a typo on p.134 in the middle of the first paragraph. Instead of “Six percent of cancer patients are 65 or older,” the number should be sixty percent.

However, there is good news on cancer. In the U.S., the cancer death rate has fallen by a third since 1991. Most of this improvement is due to the decline in tobacco use and the associated drop in lung cancers (Figure 57). Around 42% of U.S. adults smoked in 1965, but only12% did so in 2022.

Globally, one in five adults smoked in 2022 compared to one in three in 2000. Still there remain 1.25 billion adult smokers in the world, and the tobacco industry pushes hard against tobacco control measures. 

Introduction of the HPV vaccine has also improved cancer rates. The vaccine protects against human papillomavirus which is linked to a number of diseases, including 90% of cervical cancers in women. The vaccine has reduced cervical cancer deaths in the U.S. by 62% in the last decade (among US women younger than 25 years who likely benefited from HPV vaccination).

New cancer treatments and screening programs have improved cancer survival rates significantly. In the U.K. 10-year survival rates from breast cancer rose from 42% to more than 76% between 1971 and 2018. Survival rates have also improved greatly for melanoma and colon cancer, but not much for cancers of the pancreas, esophagus, and lung. 

11/11/25 UPDATE              

Re: Chapter 3.5.C. DECENTRALIZATION: SUN AND WIND ARE EVERYWHERE

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Plug-in solar panels, common in Europe, are coming to the U.S. Inexpensive solar panels that plug into an ordinary wall receptacle are popular in Europe, helping to reduce high electrical bills. They are hung on apartment balconies or backyard decks. In the U.S. they face regulatory hurdles. Utah is the first state to pass legislation, in 2025, exempting plug-in panels from costly interconnection requirements that go through the electric utility. Several other states are expected to follow suit.

9/27/25 UPDATE              

Re: Chapter 9.10. AND KELP FOREST?

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The culprit responsible for the starfish wasting disease that led to the loss of kelp forests has been identified. Researchers have found a bacterium, a strain of Vibrio pectenicida, which infects starfish and causes the disease. The loss of starfish has allowed their sea-urchin prey to multiply and eat up the kelp. The spread of the bacterium is likely aided by warming waters. The discovery will help guide starfish management and recovery efforts. These findings were published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

6/1/25 UPDATE              

Re: Chapter 9.2. WOLVES AND BIODIVERSITY IN YELLOWSTONE PARK​

Biologists find the Yellowstone ecosystems changes following wolf introduction were more complex that a simple wolf-caused cascade of beneficial changes. The elk population did decline, but partly from elk-hunting outside the park. Also beavers were introduced, helping to restore the wetlands. Meanwhile overgrazing by an expanding population of bison off-set some of the gains from fewer elk. Still there is little doubt that re-introduction of wolves contributed to ecosystem recovery.

5/25/25 UPDATE           

Re: Chapter 8.7. TIRES vs COHO SALMON

Scientists have found that the tire additive that kills salmon when tire dust washes off roadways into their habitat, can be effectively filtered out of the water with inexpensive soil mixtures. These mixtures could be spread along the edges of streams to filter out the chemical (6PPD-quinone) before it reaches the salmon.

4/10/25 UPDATE

Re: Chapter 6.5. PLASTICS BREAK UP: MICRO- AND NANO-PLASTICS

Scientists find that polysaccharides that are abundant in fenugreek and okra plants are effective in removing microplastics from water as reported in the American Chemical Society journal Omega