Good Signal Weekly Pulse — Edition 5 (October 26, 2025)

Published · Researched 2026-09-22

Week of October 20, 2025

The week in one paragraph

Brazil's Amazon just posted its best deforestation year in 13 years. INPE's DETER satellite alerts, reported in August 2026, put Amazon clearing between August 2025 and July 2026 at 2,874 km² — down 36% year on year and 55.6% below the decade average — and the January–June 2026 figure was the lowest first-half reading since 2016. This isn't a one-biome fluke either: clearing also fell across the Cerrado, Caatinga, Atlantic Forest, and Pampa, with independent Imazon satellite monitoring pointing the same direction. Social conversation, from Mongabay's Threads post to curator carousels, ran celebratory with a recurring fire-and-drought caveat thread. Still watching: DETER is a rapid-alert system, not the final word — the consolidated PRODES figures were expected in October/November 2026 and hadn't landed at research time — and the enforcement-causality story is the environment ministry's framing, not independent proof.

Rising

Clean power crossed its own Rubicon. Ember's Global Electricity Review 2026 found that in 2025, low-carbon power grew 887 TWh against 849 TWh of demand growth — solar alone met 75% of the net demand increase, and with wind the pair covered 99%. Fossil generation actually fell 38 TWh, the first time since 2020 and only the fifth time this century. Solar added a record 636 TWh and overtook wind globally. In the U.S., solar generated more electricity than coal for a full calendar month for the first time (May 2026), and clean sources cleared 50% of utility electricity from March through May — the longest such stretch on record. The charts circulated widely via Rebecca Solnit's Facebook share and @ourworldindata on Threads. Still watching: the same data ecosystem found U.S. coal generation rose 13% in 2025 and global emissions still rose 1.1% — a genuine structural win inside real counter-currents.

Wildlife's compounding interest. Kenya's rhinos hit 2,282 — up nearly 9%, or 180 animals, in one year (Kenya Wildlife Service, announced September 10, 2026), with black rhinos past 1,005, up from under 400 in the late 1980s. Meanwhile Spain confirmed the first Iberian lynx litter born at Cabañeros National Park (April 30, 2026) — two kittens to the reintroduced pair Uvita and U2, the first breeding there since the park's 1995 creation, for a species that numbered 94 in 2002 and now exceeds 2,400. Still watching: KWS's direct release wasn't captured and the black/white rhino split is unpublished; the lynx kittens' birth date, sex, and names weren't released, and it's unknown whether more litters followed in 2026.

Falling

The idea that fossil power growth is inevitable. For the first time in five years it didn't rise — a structural break, not a blip.

The Amazon's doom loop. A multi-year decline since 2023 keeps pulling the clearing trend further below its decade baseline.

Quiet signals

Grant County's veterans parade (September 18, 2026): a completion video confirms veterans were publicly honored, but the route, turnout, and honoree details weren't captured, and the organizer PDF wasn't fully extracted. Early and thin — worth a follow-up, not a headline.
The PRODES watch: if the consolidated figures confirm the DETER alerts, this would be the lowest official Amazon reading since monitoring began in 1988. Still pending, not confirmed.

Scoreboard

N/A — editions written out of sequence; no prior calls to grade.

One line to close

The satellites, the grids, and the rangers all pointed the same direction this week: down on clearing, up on recovery.