An archive of my writing from 2010 to the present.
Trans and Christian in Nashvile – The Nation, April 5, 2023
How to Blow Up a Climate Fantasy – The Nation, April 17/24, 2023
Against Climate Optimism–Because ‘Team Normal’ Won’t Save the World – The Nation, December 19, 2022
On the Other Side of Despair: Revisiting Camus’s warnings about ‘the abyss of nihilism’ – The Baffler, September 15, 2022
‘We’re Not Really Listening to One Another’: A Conversation with Gal Beckerman – Los Angeles Review of Books, April 22, 2022
Coal Trains and Climate Protest – The Nation, March 30, 2022
Great Sinners: Dostoevsky, My Father, and Me – The Baffler, March 2022
Bill McKibben and Akaya Windwood on Third Act – The Nation, October 25, 2021
Hey, Kids, Who Screwed the Climate? – The Baffler, October 13, 2021
Taking the Left Fork to Walden: Three Walks With Thoreau – The Nation, August 23/30, 2021
Stop the Enbridge Ecocide! – The Nation, July 6, 2021
Climate Catastrophe Plus Fascism: A Conversation with Andreas Malm – The Nation, May 25, 2021
The Social Beast: On the anti-totalitarian Simone Weil – The Baffler, April 14, 2021
How a Climate-Justice Champion Won Office in Rural, Working-Class Maine: An interview with Maine State Senator Chloe Maxmin – The Nation, February 16, 2021
Solidarity Now: An experiment in oral history of the present – The Baffler, January-February, 2021
No Safe Options: A Conversation with Andreas Malm – LA Review of Books, January 5, 2021
The Hardest Thing About the Green New Deal – The Nation, October 12, 2020
My Mad, Sad, Lonely, Very Unpopular Guerrilla War Against Twitter – Medium, August 3, 2020
The Difference of a Decade: Notes on ten years in the climate justice struggle – Medium, June 29, 2020
Alternate Histories: A Conversation with John Nichols about The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party – The Baffler, May 21, 2020
‘Yes’ Is Not Enough: An #EarthDay Letter to the Climate Movement – Medium, April 21, 2020
Climate, Commonwealth, and the Green New Deal: A Conversation with Alyssa Battistoni and Jedediah Britton-Purdy – LA Review of Books, March 25, 2020
Voices From the Front Lines of a Climate Direct Action Campaign – The Nation, February 7, 2020
‘This Is an Emergency,’ the Caller Said. ‘You Need to Stop the Train.’ – The Nation, December 20, 2019
Are We Doomed? Yes! No! Don’t Know! A ‘Bad Buddhist’ Manifesto – Medium, October 6, 2019 (adapted from remarks at the Rubin Museum in New York City, December 2018)
Against Climate Barbarism: A Conversation with Naomi Klein – LA Review of Books, September 30, 2019
Divining Comedy: A Conversation with Amitav Ghosh – The Baffler, September 5, 2019
Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement on Climate Justice, the Green New Deal, and Revolution – The Nation, June 4, 2019
True Crimes: On Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth – The Baffler, April 22, 2019
What ‘Living in Truth’ Looks Like in the Face of Climate Catastrophe – The Nation, April 11, 2019
This Landmark Trial of Climate Activists Puts the Political System Itself on Trial – The Nation, October 5, 2018
Christianity and Resistance: An Interview with Alan Jacobs – LA Review of Books, October 1, 2018
Carbon Ironies; On William T. Vollmann’s Carbon Ideologies, vols. 1 & 2 – The Baffler, June 13, 2018
The Boston climate trial that might have been – CommonWealth, March 28, 2018
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker Is a Climate Criminal—and I’m Willing to Go to Jail to Say So – The Nation, November 21, 2017
Learning to Live in the Dark: Reading Arendt in the Time of Climate Change – LA Review of Books, September 22, 2017
Houston’s Human Catastrophe Started Long Before the Storm – The Nation, August 29, 2017
Bob Massie Is Putting Climate and Democracy at the Center of the Massachusetts Governor’s Race – The Nation, June 1, 2017
Climate Disobedience in the Time of Trump – The Nation, February 13, 2017
Normalizing Denial: Trump, Tillerson, and Climate Reality – The Nation, December 14, 2016
Other Universities Are Divesting From Fossil Fuels—but Harvard Is Doubling Down – The Nation, May 4, 2016
Trumping the COP: The rise of Donald Trump adds urgency to the fight for climate justice – Pacific Standard, December 11, 2015
What Will It Take To Force a Real Conversation About Climate Change? An exchange with Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis – The Nation, October 26, 2015
Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Climate Justice Movement (book excerpt) – The Nation, October 8, 2015
The Climate-Justice Pope – The Nation, cover story, September 9, 2015
Is the Carbon-Divestment Movement Reaching a Tipping Point? – The Nation, April 22, 2015
Land, Community, Justice: The Gospel According to Wendell Berry – The Nation, 150th Anniversary Issue, March 23, 2015
I’m Banned From Harvard. Here’s Why I’m Going Back – The Nation, October 24, 2014
These Frontline Communities Know What Climate Justice Would Mean—and They’re Not Seeing It at the UN – The Nation, September 24, 2014
Charges Were Just Dropped Against These Climate Activists in the Most Stunning Way – The Nation, September 8, 2014
Welcome to West Port Arthur, Texas, Ground Zero in the Fight for Climate Justice – The Nation, June 3, 2014
Let This Earth Day Be The Last – The Nation, April 22, 2014
Harvard Fossil Fuel Divestment Smackdown: The Faculty vs. President Faust – The Nation, April 10, 2014
Deval Patrick, These Student Climate Activists Are Your Political Future – The Nation, April 1, 2014
Why We Must Divest From Fossil Fuels: A Student’s Open Letter to Harvard President Drew Faust – The Nation, March 19, 2014
Nearly 400 Arrested at XL Dissent—the Largest White House Civil Disobedience Action in a Generation – The Nation, March 7, 2014
Review: Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction – The Boston Globe, February 22, 2014
From Occupy to Climate Justice – The Nation, cover story, February 6, 2014
Keystone XL and Tar Sands: Voices From the Front Lines – The Nation, February 4, 2014
A Climate Truth-Tellers Honor Roll of 2013 – The Nation, December 24, 2013
#WeStandWithYou: Young Activists Fast for the Climate – The Nation, November 19, 2013
The Grassroots Battle Against Big Oil – The Nation, cover story, October 9, 2013
Tim DeChristopher: There Is No ‘Neutral’ in the Climate Fight – The Nation, October 4, 2013
Yes, Harvard, the Climate Crisis Is an ‘Extraordinarily Rare Circumstance’ – The Nation, September 16, 2013
Dear Chris Hayes: Good Job. Now Let’s Get Real – The Nation, August 19, 2013
The Naïveté We Need: Notes on a Climate Action – The Nation, July 30, 2013
Looking for ‘Climate Justice’ on Houston’s East Side – The Nation, July 25, 2013
‘We Have to Shut It Down’: The New Climate Radicals – The Nation, July 17, 2013
The ‘Henry David T.’ Blocks a Coal Tanker at Brayton Point – The Nation, May 15, 2013
Thoreau’s Radical Moment–and Ours – The Nation, cover story, May 8, 2013
‘Digging Us a Hole’: Student climate activists descend again on TransCanada in Westborough, protesting Keystone XL – The Boston Phoenix, March 12, 2013
The children: Why a generation is putting itself on the line for the climate – Grist, March 6, 2013
The New Abolitionists: Global warming is the great moral crisis of our time. The climate justice movement must embrace its radicalism to fight it – The Boston Phoenix, cover story, February 15, 2013 (no longer available online)
‘I’d Rather Fight Like Hell’: Profile of Naomi Klein – The Boston Phoenix, December 14, 2012 (no longer available online)
A Convenient Excuse: Dear mainstream media colleagues: Time is running out to prevent climate catastrophe. Lives are at stake. And you are failing us all. – The Boston Phoenix, cover story, November 2, 2012 (republished by DeSmogBlog, May 3, 2019)
Cue the math: McKibben’s roadshow takes aim at Big Oil – Grist, October 18, 2012
Gus Speth: ‘Ultimate insider’ goes radical – Grist, September 17, 2012
Through a green glass, darkly: How climate will reshape American history – Grist, August 28, 2012
Review: Katharine Wilkinson’s Between God and Green. A look at evangelicals’ shifting attitudes on global warming – The Boston Globe, July 15, 2012
Radiohead and 350.org: Mood music for a climate movement? – Grist, June 1, 2012
‘I withdraw’: An exchange with climate defeatist Paul Kingsnorth – Grist, April 11, 2012
Why I’m walking to Walden for Moving Planet – Grist, September 23, 2011
Walking Home From Walden – Slate, 5-part series, June 21, 2011
Poisoning the Well: Review of Mark Hertsgaard’s HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth – The New York Times Book Review, February 6, 2011
The Good Fight: Evangelical environmentalists are getting serious. Now if only they could all get along – Slate, December 13, 2010