“Ecohorror” films depict nature avenging itself on humans, revealing a common but wrong-headed hope: that nature can win, even if we do nothing.
Climate Change
Apocalypse and Anticlimax: The Petrified Forest, Calistoga, CA
Unlike us today, the Victorians who discovered this stone forest were less afraid of the future than they were of forgetting the past.
Hiding in Plain Sight: Talking Aquifer Depletion with Lucas Bessire
“The everyday ways that people challenge environmental destruction can be quite powerful.”
This Land Is My Land
Many landowners view themselves as environmental stewards. But can the environment ever be protected within the frame of private property?
A Messy Utopia Is All We Might Get
Climate change didn’t just wreck the planet; it closed off and reshaped the future. Even utopia—if we reach it—will be a mess.
Energy “Realism” Is Climate Fatalism
Americans may not want to hear this, but it might be best if the US is not the country leading the world through the climate crisis.
Why Write? Toward a Style for Climate Change
What should climate-change writing be? What is its ambition as it moves forward?
Swimming in the Anthropocene
Human bodies in deep water feel nature’s power and our own relative weakness. As seas rise, we should heed the swimmers.
Unruly Objects
By making familiar objects strange, two new books of poetry reveal the limits of overly simple critique.
All Tomorrow’s Warnings
Both left and right employ “speculative nonfiction” to imagine the world after climate change. But who will win the battle of the futurists?
Why Seek Impossible Foods?
The Impossible™ burger does pollute less. But does this matter, in the face of capitalism’s continued control of the global food system?
Public Thinker: Jenny Price on Refusing to Save the Planet
“First: Why are we not making more progress? Second: Why do so many people hate environmentalists?”
Alison Carey and Amrita Ramanan on Theater and Climate Change
"Greenturgy" orients a theatrical production toward the play's environment. And every play has one.
A Manifesto for the World as One Finds It
Animals have been disappearing for the past two centuries: first from our everyday lives, in the era of urbanization and industrialization, and then, as the sixth ...
When Did Nature Become Moral?
When did nature become a good for cities? When did city dwellers start imagining nature to be something they were missing? Today, urbanites’ moral associations ...
Elizabeth Rush on Listening to Those on the Frontline of Climate Change
I often find myself pulling books from my office shelves to loan to whatever MFA student or undergraduate has dropped in for a visit. It’s a delight to first listen to a curious writer discuss their ...
Loving Wilderness, Loving Borders
The Wednesday after the 2016 election, my son, Julien, arrived home from school crying. “Do we have to go home, too?” He had been talking with some of his ...
Should Environmentalists Learn to Take a Joke?
Nicole Seymour is fed up with sanctimoniousness, with judgment, and especially with normative expectations of what environmentalism should look and feel like ...
Public Thinker: Stuart Kirsch on Engaged Anthropology
Stuart Kirsch began his career as an anthropologist doing research on myth ...
Financial Markets Were Not Designed to Manage the Planet
In a market economy, almost by definition, it is the price of things that ...