Essays, features, interviews, etc.

An archive of my writing from 2010 to the present.

Trans and Christian in NashvileThe Nation, April 5, 2023

How to Blow Up a Climate FantasyThe 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 MaxminThe 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 MalmLA Review of Books, January 5, 2021

The Hardest Thing About the Green New DealThe 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 PartyThe 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-PurdyLA Review of Books, March 25, 2020

Voices From the Front Lines of a Climate Direct Action CampaignThe 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 KleinLA Review of Books, September 30, 2019

Divining Comedy: A Conversation with Amitav GhoshThe Baffler, September 5, 2019

Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement on Climate Justice, the Green New Deal, and RevolutionThe Nation, June 4, 2019

True Crimes: On Nathaniel Rich’s Losing EarthThe Baffler, April 22, 2019

What ‘Living in Truth’ Looks Like in the Face of Climate CatastropheThe 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 JacobsLA Review of Books, October 1, 2018

Carbon Ironies; On William T. Vollmann’s Carbon Ideologies, vols. 1 & 2The Baffler, June 13, 2018

The Boston climate trial that might have beenCommonWealth, March 28, 2018

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker Is a Climate Criminal—and I’m Willing to Go to Jail to Say SoThe Nation, November 21, 2017

Learning to Live in the Dark: Reading Arendt in the Time of Climate ChangeLA Review of Books, September 22, 2017

Houston’s Human Catastrophe Started Long Before the StormThe Nation, August 29, 2017

Bob Massie Is Putting Climate and Democracy at the Center of the Massachusetts Governor’s RaceThe Nation, June 1, 2017

Climate Disobedience in the Time of TrumpThe Nation, February 13, 2017

Normalizing Denial: Trump, Tillerson, and Climate RealityThe Nation, December 14, 2016

Other Universities Are Divesting From Fossil Fuels—but Harvard Is Doubling DownThe Nation, May 4, 2016

Trumping the COP: The rise of Donald Trump adds urgency to the fight for climate justicePacific Standard, December 11, 2015

What Will It Take To Force a Real Conversation About Climate Change? An exchange with Naomi Klein and Avi LewisThe Nation, October 26, 2015

Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Climate Justice Movement (book excerpt) – The Nation, October 8, 2015

The Climate-Justice PopeThe 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 BerryThe Nation, 150th Anniversary Issue, March 23, 2015

I’m Banned From Harvard. Here’s Why I’m Going BackThe Nation, October 24, 2014

These Frontline Communities Know What Climate Justice Would Mean—and They’re Not Seeing It at the UNThe Nation, September 24, 2014

Charges Were Just Dropped Against These Climate Activists in the Most Stunning WayThe Nation, September 8, 2014

Welcome to West Port Arthur, Texas, Ground Zero in the Fight for Climate JusticeThe Nation, June 3, 2014

Let This Earth Day Be The LastThe Nation, April 22, 2014

Harvard Fossil Fuel Divestment Smackdown: The Faculty vs. President FaustThe Nation, April 10, 2014

Deval Patrick, These Student Climate Activists Are Your Political FutureThe Nation, April 1, 2014

Why We Must Divest From Fossil Fuels: A Student’s Open Letter to Harvard President Drew FaustThe Nation, March 19, 2014

Nearly 400 Arrested at XL Dissent—the Largest White House Civil Disobedience Action in a GenerationThe Nation, March 7, 2014

Review: Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth ExtinctionThe Boston Globe, February 22, 2014

From Occupy to Climate JusticeThe Nation, cover story, February 6, 2014

Keystone XL and Tar Sands: Voices From the Front LinesThe Nation, February 4, 2014

A Climate Truth-Tellers Honor Roll of 2013The Nation, December 24, 2013

#WeStandWithYou: Young Activists Fast for the ClimateThe Nation, November 19, 2013

The Grassroots Battle Against Big OilThe Nation, cover story, October 9, 2013

Tim DeChristopher: There Is No ‘Neutral’ in the Climate FightThe 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 RealThe Nation, August 19, 2013

The Naïveté We Need: Notes on a Climate ActionThe Nation, July 30, 2013

Looking for ‘Climate Justice’ on Houston’s East SideThe Nation, July 25, 2013

‘We Have to Shut It Down’: The New Climate RadicalsThe Nation, July 17, 2013

The ‘Henry David T.’ Blocks a Coal Tanker at Brayton PointThe Nation, May 15, 2013

Thoreau’s Radical Moment–and OursThe Nation, cover story, May 8, 2013

‘Digging Us a Hole’: Student climate activists descend again on TransCanada in Westborough, protesting Keystone XLThe Boston Phoenix, March 12, 2013

The children: Why a generation is putting itself on the line for the climateGrist, 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 itThe Boston Phoenix, cover story, February 15, 2013 (no longer available online)

‘I’d Rather Fight Like Hell’: Profile of Naomi KleinThe 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 OilGrist, October 18, 2012

Gus Speth: ‘Ultimate insider’ goes radicalGrist, September 17, 2012

Through a green glass, darkly: How climate will reshape American historyGrist, August 28, 2012

Review: Katharine Wilkinson’s Between God and Green. A look at evangelicals’ shifting attitudes on global warmingThe 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 KingsnorthGrist, April 11, 2012

Why I’m walking to Walden for Moving PlanetGrist, September 23, 2011

Walking Home From WaldenSlate, 5-part series, June 21, 2011

Poisoning the Well: Review of Mark Hertsgaard’s HOT: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on EarthThe New York Times Book Review, February 6, 2011

The Good Fight: Evangelical environmentalists are getting serious. Now if only they could all get alongSlate, December 13, 2010