Hey everyone! This week we got three good news stories, and one of them has a huge impact on global carbon emissions. First up, an Amur tiger, released into the wild in Kazakhstan for the first time in decades. Alongside that, record breaking EV sales across the world. And finally, a court ruling in Türkiye just cancelled the expansion of a major coal plant. Let's get into it!

The Caspian tiger doesn't get the same recognition as the dodo or the woolly mammoth, but it was a remarkable animal. One of the largest tiger subspecies to have ever lived, once ranging from Türkiye all the way to northwestern China. Habitat loss, hunting, and deliberate extermination campaigns wiped it out. The last confirmed sighting in Kazakhstan was in 1948. So for more than 70 years, that looked like the end of the story.

But now Kazakhstan is trying to write a different ending. Since there are no Caspian tigers left to work with, scientists turned to the closest thing available: the Amur tiger from Russia's Far East. Genetic research found the two subspecies share almost identical DNA, close enough that Amur tigers can genuinely fill the ecological role the Caspian tiger once played.

The plan has been years in the making. Kazakhstan set up the Ile Balkhash State Nature Reserve back in 2018. Then released over 200 Bukhara deer and relocated more than 100 kulans to make sure any released tiger would actually have something to hunt.

That patience just paid off. On July 31st, a female Amur tiger named Umit, meaning hope in Kazakh, was released into the reserve. She's one of four tigers brought over from Russia, the male and two cubs are still in adaptation enclosures, awaiting their own release.

Of course, this is just a first step in what will be a long, patient climb back. A single tiger doesn't make a population. But after such a long time, it's a first real step forward and that's worth celebrating on its own.

For most of the last decade, EV adoption has been a story of slow, steady progress. Early models were expensive, had limited range, and lacked enough charging infrastructure. The question was always when this would go mainstream. June 2026 gave a pretty clear answer. Global EV sales crossed 2 million units in a single month, a number that would have seemed like a fantasy five years ago.

Here's the surprising part: Europe led the surge, selling around 530,000 EVs in June, up 31% from the same month last year, helped by incentives, high gas prices, and a wave of newly affordable models. China meanwhile still leads in sheer volume, selling around 1.1 million EVs within its own borders in June, but their domestic sales stayed roughly flat.

Two million EVs in a single month also builds real momentum: more sales mean cheaper batteries, more charging stations, and more competition, all of which make the next EV easier to buy than the last one.

The transition is still uneven around the world, but a number like this shows it's no longer a niche shift. It's picking up real speed.

Coal doesn't go away easily. Even in countries that have made climate commitments, existing coal infrastructure generates jobs, energy, and political interests that make phasing it out genuinely hard. Stopping new coal projects is difficult enough. Stopping the expansion of an existing one, with its supply chains and economic dependencies already in place, is harder still. Which is why what just happened in Türkiye is worth paying attention to.

A Turkish court has cancelled the planned 688 megawatt expansion of the Afşin-Elbistan A plant, one of the country's largest coal facilities. This happened after local residents and groups including Greenpeace Türkiye challenged it in court over risks to public health, farmland, and water supplies. The court agreed with them. That's a concrete outcome, not a promise or a target. This single ruling actually brings Türkiye's coal project cancellation rate to 97%, a global record.

Türkiye is set to host COP31, the UN's climate summit, this November, putting its own energy record under an international spotlight. So hosting the world's largest climate conference while expanding coal capacity would have been an awkward contradiction to defend.

It's worth being upfront about the limits here too. The ruling has already been appealed by the ministry and the plant's operator, so it isn't fully final. And in the same month this decision came down, Türkiye's government announced an expansion of a different coal plant elsewhere in the country. But legal challenges like this are increasingly becoming a real part of the climate toolkit, stepping in and delivering results where policy alone hasn't.

Alright, that's it for today. Tigers returning to the steppe, electric cars selling by the millions, and a coal plant expansion stopped in its tracks. Not a bad set of stories to carry into the weekend.

Thanks so much for reading, Luis & Freddy🌻

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