Two persons wearing neon orange vest kneeling in front of a defaced painting hanging on the wall

The Art of Climate Protest

Jayme Collins explains how a new generation of climate activists draw from histories of protest art to reveal the ties between the art world and fossil fuel capitalism.
The Gremlincore Aesthetic Might be the Climate Solution We Need

The Gremlincore Aesthetic Might be the Climate Solution We Need

Internet aesthetic niches are not often seen as climate solutions. However, Madi Whaley argues that the gremlincore aesthetic, focusing on lesser-loved things in nature, serves as an environmental ethic rooted in abundance.
an image of the man-made island in the Maldives, Hulhumalé

Centering Islands in a Rising Ocean: A Conversation with Christina Gerhardt

Samm Newton interviews Dr. Christina Gerhardt about her 2023 book Sea Change, which is a collection of essays, a history of connection, and a window into island nations facing an uncertain future.
a birthday cake shaped like a camp site

Ten Hidden Gems From the Edge Effects Archives

The editorial board recommends environmental readings from the archives—on topics ranging from the Anthropocene to environmental art to blue humanities.
A bird's eye image of a single gray whale swimming in the open ocean.

The Ocean’s Beating Hearts

Hilary Clark reflects on how whale watching in Monterey helps reveal important marine multispecies connections—some more unexpected than others.
people holding signs at a climate protest

New Climate Vocabulary for a Changing World

How can we enrich colloquial language about climate change? Inspired by Gen Z slang, Stevie Chedid imagines a linguistic paradigm shift.
Bog with green vegetation and blue water

Swamp Feelings

Annie Proulx's 2022 book Fen, Bog, and Swamp is a melancholy love letter to wetland ecosystems. But missing from this lament, Nino McQuown argues, are hopeful histories of resistance.
Wildfire smoke over burn scar in Yellowstone

Studying Yellowstone’s Burn Scars to Reveal its Future

Nathan Kiel investigates the potential for post-fire forest recovery across the greater Yellowstone ecosystem in a warming world.
aerial photo showing white ice melting and extending into rivers and eventually into the ocean

Who is Killing the Glaciers? From Glacier Funerals to Glacier Autopsies

Glaciers do not simply die; they are killed. Zachary Provant and Mark Carey discuss how attribution science can help pinpoint climate change culprits and bring justice.
Werewolves Within is the Pipeline Horror Film You Didn’t Know You Needed

Werewolves Within is the Pipeline Horror Film You Didn’t Know You Needed

Werewolves and petro-masculinity and extractive capitalism, oh my! In this review of a recent horror-comedy film, Addie Hopes and Richelle Wilson examine an overlooked aspect of the story. Where pipelines go, murder follows.
silhouette of a person wearing a narrow brimmed hat and holding a rake, backlit by the sun

Unearthing the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming: A Conversation with Liz Carlisle

Liz Carlisle shares stories from her latest book, which uncovers the history of regenerative agriculture and the farmers of color who practice it.
Maya ruins stick out above the green jungle and into the blue sky

Visualizing 6,000 Years of Environmental Change

Benjamin Keenan shares how his "Itzan" project translating geochemical data into artwork with digital artist Tim Thomasson can evoke consideration of current environmental crises.
A young Xicana activists stands in front of a banner surrounded by a crowd.

Climate Influencers and the Politics of Attention

Mark Ortiz shows how youth climate activists strategically leverage attention to gain institutional influence while navigating its uneven distribution across geographies.
Petroglyphs are carved into some rocks. In the distance there is a river and mountains.

Grappling with the Drying Riverbeds of the Agua Fria

As the once flowing Agua Fria river runs dry, Rachel Howard discusses how Arizona communities are living with climate change.
Blue road sign reading "evacuation route" in front of a highway at night

Environmental Evacuation Is a Collective Problem

Max Lubell looks to contraflow traffic signs to argue that climate change discourses must include a renewed focus on evacuation from disasters.
Traces of Industry in the Trees of Jefferson National Forest

Traces of Industry in the Trees of Jefferson National Forest

Chelsea Fisher follows the entangled histories of iron and paper in a second-growth forest.
Waves reaching the beach of fire island

Blurring Barriers on Fire Island

Amelia Carter maps the shifting geography and queer ecologies of a popular gay resort spot.
Numerous blue and green objects placed close together

Swimming with Trash in the Caribbean

The Caribbean is known for its pristine beaches and tourist spots, but it has increasingly become a dumping ground for the world's unmanaged garbage. Ysabel Muñoz Martínez charts how "wastescapes" are proliferating in the Anthropocene.
Faculty Favorites: Books That Go Beyond the Classroom

Faculty Favorites: Books That Go Beyond the Classroom

Six scholars from campuses across the country recommend new environmental books about the blue humanities, environmental justice, the histories of bikes and blockades, and more.
A truck trailer with bins of apples is parked in an orchard

This Year, Wisconsin Apple Growers Are Feeling the Squeeze

Apple growers had a historically low harvest this year. Jules Reynolds asks: what does climate change mean for the future of Wisconsin’s orchards?
Aerial view on a futuristic garden with greenery and man-made structure in Singapore

The Hidden Histories of Mud Crabs and Oil Monsters in Singapore: A Panel Discussion

Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Neo Xiaoyun, and Yogesh Tulsi discuss their contributions to the anthology Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene: Environmental Perspectives on Life in Singapore.
Malagasy gold bars with red and blue writing on them

How COVID is Reconfiguring Labor in Extractive Industries

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended global circuits of resource extraction. Brian Ikaika Klein, Stephanie Postar, Laura Dev, Hilary Faxon, and Matthew Libassi tell the story of a gold-filled suitcase to show how.
Flood water on concrete near an old building

Living with Floods: A Conversation with Caroline Gottschalk Druschke

The Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin experienced historic flood events in late summer 2018. To commemorate the third anniversary of these floods, Caroline Gottschalk Druschke shares how the oral history project Stories from the Flood helped with community healing in the aftermath.
Cylinders of polished stone in various colors separated by planks of wood

Reckoning With Deep Time For A Livable World

Katie Mummah reviews Vincent Ialenti's book Deep Time Reckoning, which uses lessons from nuclear waste disposal to show how long-term thinking can help us and the planet.
landscape of peat swamps with a path in the middle

To Build a New Capital City, Indonesia Must Design for Resilience

Indonesia plans to move its capital city from Jakarta to Borneo. Jeamme Chia, Gioia Montana Connell, and Dewi Tan argue that the new capital provides an opportunity address existing housing, water management, and land issues.
Wolf River on a sunny day with a large stick in foreground and green treeline in background

At the Mouth of the Menominee River: A Conversation with Anahkwet (Guy Reiter)

Anahkwet (Guy Reiter) discusses how Menominee language, culture, and history shape his work protecting the Menominee and Wolf Rivers.
Truck on dirt road through green fields

A Syllabus for Plantation Worlds

Drawing from postcolonial, Caribbean, Black, and Indigenous Studies, Sophie Sapp Moore and Aida Arosoaie curate a reading list that highlights the complex dynamics of plantation worlds, past and present. Their syllabus is the perfect end to our series on the Plantationocene.
Three smokestacks with black smoke, mountains in the background. Video game still.

Finding Connection and Resisting Extraction in Quarantine Gaming

During the COVID-19 pandemic, video games offered Nat Mesnard and many others an escape from isolation. But the false promise of endless productivity in factory building games like Satisfactory ensnared them in a myth of capitalist "progress."
Close-up photograph of slender plant roots

The Roots of (Radical) Animism: A Conversation with Jemma Deer

In conversation with Shelby Brewster, Jemma Deer discusses her new book, Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World.
Ojibwe protestors march against the Line 3 pipeline, carrying signs and chanting

On Ojibwe Lands, Protecting Water and Life from the Line 3 Pipeline

The new Enbridge Line 3 pipeline poses a slew of threats on treaty land. Ojibwe people lead the movement against its construction in Minnesota.
Black and white photograph of a man wearing glasses. Headshot of Dipesh Chakrabarty

Mapping the Planetary: Five Questions for Dipesh Chakrabarty

Historian and postcolonial studies scholar Dipesh Chakrabarty discusses the relationships between humans and the planets we imagine, construct, and inhabit.
Reading Climate Justice through the Indian Farmers' Movement

Reading Climate Justice through the Indian Farmers’ Movement

The Trolley Times is an important source of information and community-building for the farmers' protests in India. Sritama Chatterjee shares stories from the newsletter that show the power of everyday acts of care in climate justice organizing.
Purple and white beaded wampum belt

Colonial Theft and Indigenous Resistance in the Kleptocene

The term Anthropocene does not address centuries of violent colonial theft. Kyle Keeler proposes a new title: the Kleptocene.
Two bulldozers surrounded by piles of cut trees with rain forest in background

Defending Tomorrow Today

In light of the recent Global Witness report, Rob Nixon discusses the dangers environmental defenders face and their role as frontline workers in the fight against climate breakdown and zoonotic pandemics.
Geese fly in wildlife preserve against city backdrop

The Future of Conservation: A Conversation with Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher

Yardain Amron talks with Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher—co-authors of The Conservation Revolution—about capitalism, ecotourism, and the urgent need to re-imagine mainstream conservation.
What Happens When Gamers Become (Digital) Geoengineers?

What Happens When Gamers Become (Digital) Geoengineers?

Elon Musk’s dream of colonizing Mars may be decades away, but video games allow us to practice geoengineering here and now. Doron Darnov explores how digital terraforming both shapes and reflects our desires for worldmaking at (inter)planetary scales.
An image of the SARS-CoV-2 virus which lead to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic

Who’s Afraid of the Climate Crisis? Fear, Anxiety, Dread, and Pandemic Panic

Ready for a diagnosis? Jennifer Ladino distinguishes between our daily emotions and explains how pandemic panic can help us face the climate crisis.
Making a Living with Salt in Divya Victor’s Kith

Making a Living with Salt in Divya Victor’s Kith

A poetic and visceral narrative of salt mining in Gujarat, India, Divya Victor’s Kith calls attention to the lives and deaths of salt farmers.
Activist crowd holds "welcome refugee" banner

How Climate Refugees Are Shaping Movements and Walls

The plight of climate refugees has become a popular rallying cry for climate change activism. But it is also leading to harsher, militarized borders.
A black and white photograph of a road leading to a clearcut landscape

ClearCut – The Wages of Dominion

In ClearCut – The Wages of Dominion, photographer John Riggs presents a guided meditation about the cultural mindset behind clearcutting.
A group of protestors in Paris, one holding a sign that reads "cool kids saving a hot planet"

OK, Doomers! The Climate Generation Has Arrived

The climate generation is coming of age. Sarah Jaquette Ray, author of A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety, explains what older generations have to learn.
Close up of ice crystals on glacier. Sunset in background.

Cryogenics

A poetic meditation on glaciers and glacial worldings in Eyak, Alaska, "Cryogenics" reflects on human and more-than-human kinships at low temperatures.
film still from midstream at twilight

Experimental Documentary Captures Oil Midstream

Steve Rowell’s film Midstream at Twilight uses drone photography to follow the toxic infrastructure of oil pipelines from source to refinery to gift shop.
An island of sea ice with several walruses floating on it photographed from above

Arctic Ecologies, Then and Now: A Conversation with Bathsheba Demuth

Bathsheba Demuth discusses her new book, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, and Arctic histories of ecological crisis and hope.
An Instagram post of a glacier, with a caption: Yesterday the #NWProject was in Pond Inlet in Nunavut, learning about the Ikaarvik program, which trains Inuit youth to participate in scientific work and encourages visiting Arctic researchers to engage with the community. Also bearded seals! Narwhals! And $58 12-packs of soda! Please note that my FB live didn’t happen (satellite issues)—communication remains very very difficult in the Arctic (this is my thesis). Photos much compressed to make it possible to post. #nsffunded #changingArctic #Arctic #Nunavut #Climatechange

The Social Media of Polar Exploration

Hester Blum's new book, The News at the Ends of the Earth, explains why 19th-century newspapers printed on polar expeditions offer a model for communicating in the age of climate crisis.
Robert Macfarlane's portrait with a portion of the cover of Underland

Adventures in the Underland: A Conversation with Robert Macfarlane

Celebrated author Robert Macfarlane discusses his latest book, Underland, which journeys deep underground to look for answers.
A satellite image of the Mississippi River

Recording the Mississippi Soundscape: A Conversation with Monica Haller

Artist Monica Haller explores the Mississippi River as an Anthropocene site with intimate ties to her own family history. She records the underwater sounds of this historical waterway to trace connections between the river and legacies of slavery, philosophies of ownership, and environmental racism.
A red dirt road through the planted rows of the Sime Darby plantation

Reflections on the Plantationocene: A Conversation with Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing

Plantations discipline both plants and people. Two scholars reckon with the Plantationocene to develop a shared vision of multispecies justice.
An aerial view of Haida Gwaii, an archipelago off the northern Pacific coast of Canada.

Who Gets to Have Ecoanxiety?

Anthropocene anxiety about uncertain climate futures is on the rise. For the Indigenous Haida Nation, ecoanxiety arrived 150 years ago.
A screen shot of the title screen of the movie Cooked.

Slow-Motion Disaster and Extreme Weather: Five Questions for Judith Helfand

The 1995 Chicago heat wave revealed how racism and poverty are the slow-motion disasters that become glaringly visible during extreme weather events. A new documentary film tells this story.
An rust, abandoned plow sits in the foreground with a hayfield full of wind turbines against a bright sky.

Farm Life on an Energy Frontier

How does energy production affect agricultural livelihoods and the fabric of local communities in southwestern North Dakota? As wind turbines, oil rigs, and “man camps” spread across the region, responses from residents vary from resentment to acceptance.
An oil pipeline bisects a snowy forest in Alaska.

There’s No Escaping Oil, Even in the Wild Arctic

A renewed push to open the Arctic to oil and gas drilling leads one writer to investigate petromodernity, arguing that oil flows through ideas of the environment as much as it does through the economy.
Two orange gloved hands hold a round disc of uranium with the number 2068 written on it.

How Extraction Fuels the Anthropocenes: A Conversation with Gabrielle Hecht

How do the minerals in your phone place you within global flows of extraction? Gabrielle Hecht discusses uranium mining in Gabon, sea rise in the Marshall Islands, and the geopolitics of an African Anthropocene.
A black and white etching of a flooded street with ships washing past buildings

Imagining a Green New Deal Through Climate Fiction

Is the Green New Deal real or science fiction? Kim Stanley Robinson's novel New York 2140 imagines a flooded world where climate action is unavoidable.
Crisis and Creativity in Environmental Pedagogy

Crisis and Creativity in Environmental Pedagogy

Given the often-debilitating realities of environmental issues, how can teachers build an environmental pedagogy that inspires creative change?
Photo collage of rice, fields, and cotton plants

Plantation Legacies

The Anthropocene gives a name to human-caused environmental change. The Plantationocene puts colonialism, capitalism, and enduring racial hierarchies at the center of the conversation and asks what past and future modes of resistance might emerge.
Fishing subsidies Kiribati

Where Have All the Fish Gone?

Subsidized fishing fleets are rapidly depleting fishing stocks and harming communities in the Central Pacific. It’s time island nations get a seat at the negotiating table on global trade and climate change.
A shoreline with algae, a discarded plastic turtle, foliage, rocks, and water with a visible slick sheen of something on its surface

Our Waters, Our Selves: A Conversation with Astrida Neimanis

"We can't contain water." Feminist philosopher Astrida Neimanis discusses the environmental inequalities and queer rhythms of the elusive fluid.
A colorful drawing with green fields, pink mountains, and a collection of human and animal figures.

Weathering This World with Comics

Comics and graphic novels help us picture new worlds and imagine how to save our own. Four writers recommend their favorites.
Scarlet runner beans in many colors - dark brown, light brown, red, dark pink, yellow, speckled white and brown - appear against a white background with a ruler and label visible on either side

Banking on Seeds for Our Future

The USDA’s National Plant Germplasm System is arguably the most important seed bank for our food supply. An agroecologist explains why it is in desperate need of attention.
Tia Nelson poses folding her arms and wearing a light blue pullover in front of brown grass and yellow foliage.

Creating the Climate Voter: A Conversation with Tia Nelson

Last week's IPCC report sunk the spirits of many. But one veteran activist, with no time for despair, still believes in the power of citizens.
Kickapoo River covers a roadway in muddy water.

Wading out the Kickapoo River Flood

After historic floods devastate Wisconsin's Driftless Area, a team of scientists reflects on their fieldwork in the Kickappo River Valley to make sense of an entangled, multispecies world.
From the cover of Lauren Groff's book Florida, the orange silhouette of a panther is set against a black background with white capitalized letters spelling FLORIDA

Why All Fiction Should Be Climate Fiction: A Conversation with Lauren Groff

How does the celebrated author of the new story collection "Florida" write books in a poisoned, warming world? "By being constantly, constantly angry. All day long."
The sun sets at the lakeshore and the silhouette of a bird is at the edge of the setting sun.

The Science of Seasons on an Out-of-Sync Planet

Phenology, tracking the comings and goings of species each season, provides insight into the disruptions caused by human-induced climate change.
The Water's Not Fine: A Conversation with Anna Clark

The Water’s Not Fine: A Conversation with Anna Clark

The Flint water crisis is not over. Anna Clark’s new book tells the history of how we got here and how lead is here to stay.
Lynn Keller stands in front of several lines of poetry written in grey words on a wall. The words "en-wrap" "swaddled" "holdfast" and "Buddha" are emboldened.

Why We Need Experimental Poetry in the Anthropocene: A Conversation with Lynn Keller

A new generation of experimental poets responds to the growing awareness of human impacts on the planet with work that challenges traditional nature poetry and poetic form.
Handheld DDT pump, with red white and blue label with visible wear

A History of the Anthropocene in Objects

In this book teaser, objects like monkey wrenches and pesticide pumps help narrate a fragmentary history of the Anthropocene.
A photo portrait of Dylan Miner, looking at the camera wearing a plaid shirt and blue sportcoat with long braids on both sides of his head.

Indigenous Art as Creative Resistance: A Conversation with Dylan Miner

How can we use the arts to decolonize our relations to the land? An artist, activist, and scholar discusses the many forms of creative resistance we can use to imagine and enact new and better worlds.
A panoramic photograph of a desert canyon with mountains in the background.

A Nation’s Shadow at Bears Ears National Monument

In a series of photographs, a scholar and wilderness guide meditates on wild places and the politics of resource extraction in southern Utah.
a large glacier's edge

The Swiftness of Glaciers: Language in a Time of Climate Change

As the climate changes, so does our language. Melting glaciers force us to rethink the metaphors we use to make sense of the world around us.
The writer Kim Fu, author of "The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore." Photo by Laura D'Alessandro.

Nine Women Who Are Rewriting the Environment

As we continue to celebrate Women's History Month, here is a list of new and recent work by women writers whose environmental imaginations keep us all inspired, impassioned, and ready for whatever comes next.
A red dragonfly rests on a thistle.

Millions of Insects and a Curator at Work

Insects are going extinct at alarming rates. Curators at one of the country’s premier insect collections are working to slow that change.
Natalie Portman inspects a crocodile in the film Annihilation

In Annihilation, the Revolution Will Not Be Human

A science fiction novel offers a genre-bending perspective that helps us think about wildness, purity, and invasion in new and strange ways.
The protester's sign, which reads "Climate Emergency," takes up the whole frame. The sign includes the shape of the Earth, an orange and red background, and stark black lettering in the foreground.

The Rise of the Climate Change Novel

What happens when our changing world starts to look more and more unreal? The recent boom in novels that depict climate change pits the real against the magical, surreal, and fantastical.
A sterling silver sculpture of a honeybee

Finding Hope and Community with Honeybees: A Conversation with Heather Swan

The decline of honeybees is cause for alarm and a symptom of global biodiversity loss. Beekeepers, however, find creative ways to build relationships with honeybees and steward their hives.
Thomas Fire

The Thomas Fire Fans the Flames of Southern California’s Housing Crisis

The Thomas Fire continues to rage, bringing devastation and exacerbating existing inequality.
A group of people stand in front of houses that pitch and lean into one another on the "Drunken Row" of Victorian homes at Howard Street (now Van Ness) between 17th and 18th.

The Potential for Peril Built into San Francisco

An environmental history of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake weaves together urban planning, plate tectonics, Progressive-Era reform, and soil dynamics.
Erratic Monuments to a Melting World

Erratic Monuments to a Melting World

As glaciers melt, they leave behind abandoned rocks and other erratics. This photo essay of the Alaskan wilderness explores how glacial erratics are time travelers, treasure troves, reliquaries, and rubble.
Photo of Jason W. Moore

The Case for Ecological Reparations: A Conversation with Jason W. Moore

Making things right in the face of climate change demands that colonialism, race, and gender take center stage in the story of capitalism.
Jill Pelto illustration with the ocean in the foreground and two layers of glacier in the left rear, with the horizon shaped by a line graph moving down from left to right. Four suns are arranged in an arc in the background.

Apocalypse in Watercolor

To reach a broader audience, one artist and physical scientist takes data on environmental catastrophe and renders it beautiful.
An aerial photograph shows beachfront damage caused by Hurricane Irma in South Florida.

After the Wind and the Rain: Making Sense of a Record Hurricane Season

Harvey, Irma, Maria. Why has there been so much damage, and what does it mean? A guide for reading helps make sense of disaster.
A picture of Gregory Cushman

The Fragile Society We’ve Built from Rocks: A Conversation With Gregory Cushman

Fertilizers, computers, gasoline, and other parts of our everyday lives come from irreplaceable deposits found in the Earth. But how long will they last?
Painting by Theron Caldwell Ris captures the multispecies lifeways Heise envisions.

Ursula K. Heise Thinks Beyond Melancholy: A Review of “Imagining Extinction”

Extinction stories have a flavor, and it tastes like melancholy. A new book asks what different narratives we could bring to the table.
Chicken nuggets against a blue square background imposed in the upper-left corner of an image of a charred industrial kichen after a fire, run through with horizontal red stripes, suggests an image of the U.S. flag.

How’d We Get So Cheap? A Conversation with Bryant Simon

The author of "The Hamlet Fire" discusses a deadly blaze at a chicken-processing facility and the logics of cheapness which provided the kindling.
A trypctic featuring, left to right, gut bacteria in a petri dish, a photo portrait of Anna Tsing, and a silhouette of a smockstack and smoke.

The Best of End Times: A Conversation with Anna Tsing

The author of "The Mushroom at the End of the World" is back with another exploration of how humans and non-humans will make their lives in the ruins of modernity.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, together with Al Gore, former United States Vice President and Chair of the Climate Reality Project, had a joint encounter with civil society representatives and the press during the during the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21). "An Inconvenient Sequel" follows Al Gore in his efforts to tackle climate change.

Al Gore and the Global South: A Review of “An Inconvenient Sequel”

Climate change advocacy requires finding common ground. Al Gore's new documentary highlights the importance of listening to the Global South to find solutions.
Seeds as Time Capsules

Seeds as Time Capsules

When Courtney Fullilove looks inside a seed, she sees Mennonite farmers, Comanche agriculture, and Echinacea patents. Her new book, "The Profit of the Earth," shows that the genes of a seed can narrate the history of American empire.
A haenyeo, floating in the water, holds up her catch. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Bittersweet Catch: Korea’s Diving Women and the Pitfalls of Cultural Preservation

While attending a school set up to train the next generation of haenyeo divers, one woman grapples with the historical and ongoing complexities of maintaining the traditional practice.
"Stop Calling Me Resilient": Addressing Environmental Degradation in Louisiana

“Stop Calling Me Resilient”: Addressing Environmental Degradation in Louisiana

Louisiana's coast restoration project, and its underlying framework of climate resiliency, is generating pushback from environmental justice organizations.
A booth set up by the Department of Entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on State Street during Earth Week. Photo by Michael Sievers, 1970.

The Trouble with the March for Science: A Conversation with Adam Rome

What if today's climate activists acted more like the scientists who spoke out on the first Earth Day?
Crying Dugongs and Ocean Encounters in Southeast Asia

Crying Dugongs and Ocean Encounters in Southeast Asia

Stories of the dugong, a cousin of the manatee, offer important insight into human-nature encounters in the waters of Southeast Asia.
Crumpled sign that reads "Water is Unfit for Human Consumption"

A Syllabus for Teaching Water Politics

A new syllabus outlines a series of readings for teaching the politics of water.
The camp at Standing Rock. Photo by Larry Nesper, November 2016.

Loaves and Fishes at Standing Rock

A senior scholar of North American indigenous history visits the Oceti Sakowin camp and finds cause for hope. Up to a point.
A photograph of Jedediah Purdy, taken by Brian Hamilton, March 2017.

Politics for a Maimed World: A Conversation with Jedediah Purdy

The acclaimed cultural critic and author of "After Nature" set off to explore the uncharted depths of the Anthropocene. But he found Thoreau there waiting for him.
Humility and Hubris: A Review of Luc Jacquet's "Ice and the Sky"

Humility and Hubris: A Review of Luc Jacquet’s “Ice and the Sky”

Even with the impacts of the Anthropocene, it would be hubristic not to realize that ice and sky will far outlast anything so puny as humanity.
Life-sized diorama of ice age megafauna trapped in a salt lick at Big Bone Lick. Photo by the author.

Creationism, Mastodons, and Natural History in Kentucky

In northern Kentucky, conflicting stories about natural history mirror the religious and scientific debates of the late eighteenth century.
Global Environmental Change in Indonesia: A Roundtable

Global Environmental Change in Indonesia: A Roundtable

Indonesian is known both for biodiversity and environmental degradation. This tension resonates with the stories we tell about global environmental change.
The Truthiness of Nature Films: A Review of Perrin and Cluzaud's "Seasons"

The Truthiness of Nature Films: A Review of Perrin and Cluzaud’s “Seasons”

The makers of "Winged Migration" return with a new film that challenges viewers’ expectations of authenticity in nature documentaries.
Expressing Extinction: A Conversation with Anna Lehner

Expressing Extinction: A Conversation with Anna Lehner

During this period of rapid political change, glass and Morse code provide mediums for reflection on the environment and extinction.
A Wisconsin and Southern locomotive engine passes in front of the Blount St. natural gas power plant in Madison, Wisconsin. A bicycle is parked in the foreground.

A Syllabus for Contextualizing Energy Policy Debates

Visions of the future of United States energy production cannot be understood without a good sense of the past. We've gathered some of the most helpful sources for thinking historically about energy.
Beautiful Resilience: Conversations after an Earthquake

Beautiful Resilience: Conversations after an Earthquake

A storyteller's account of Manabu Ikeda's pen-and-ink commemoration of Japan's earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in 2011.
Turning Toward

Turning Toward

A writer's poignant reflections on care and healing. What might happen if we all turned toward, instead of away?
Arctic iceberg with its underside exposed

Is the Arctic Out of Time? A Conversation with Andrew Stuhl

Andrew Stuhl discusses how we can “unfreeze” the Arctic's history and gain new insight into climate change and future possibilities.
ceremony

The Ethics of Ceremony at Standing Rock

Activists at Standing Rock bring a sense of ceremony to environmental politics.
Review: Adam Trexler's Anthropocene Fictions

Review: Adam Trexler’s Anthropocene Fictions

A new book surveys 150 novels about climate change and makes the case for the virtues of cli-fi.
Talking Transformation in Beijing

Talking Transformation in Beijing

A conference in China brings graduate students from around the world together to discuss environmental transformation.
Environmental Complacency and the Rise of Distraction; or, How I Learned to Embrace Worrying and Love Movies

Environmental Complacency and the Rise of Distraction; or, How I Learned to Embrace Worrying and Love Movies

How do species extinctions past and present affect our daily lives? What can we do to connect to environmental change?
Nuclear power station row in Chernobyl. Photo by Tim Mousseau.

Chernobyl at Thirty: A Special Edition Environment and Health Roundtable

Drawing from presentations at the recent meeting of the American Society for Environmental History in Seattle, a historian, an ecologist, and a political scientist bring their different perspectives to bear on central questions of knowledge stirred by Chernobyl. What have we learned, or not?
On Care in Dark Times

On Care in Dark Times

How Emily Dickinson might tell the story of the Anthropocene.
Working Concepts: A Conversation with Sarah Besky

Working Concepts: A Conversation with Sarah Besky

A conversation about labor: labor on tea plantations, the labor of language, and the ways in which the Anthropocene invites labor-focused inquiry.
Floppy disk

Vocabularies for Technology, Nature, and the Anthropocene: A Conversation with Scott Kirsch

A conversation with geographer Scott Kirsch about what we mean when we talk about technology, and how we can understand the relationship between language and environmental and historical change.
The Missile

The Missile

A sonnet about an unexpected winter visitor.
Notes from the Great Transition

Notes from the Great Transition

Training people to help create communities that are better suited to a changing environment is important work—but quite a challenge when it’s not at all clear what that future will look like.
The Flint Water Crisis: A Special Edition Environment and Health Roundtable

The Flint Water Crisis: A Special Edition Environment and Health Roundtable

The Flint water crisis sounds a call not just to address the immediate emergency, but to consider the larger legacies to which it points. We’ve assembled a roundtable of noted scholars to contemplate this history, whose understanding, they suggest, is crucial to any broader solution.
Listening to the Anthropocene: John Luther Adams's <em>Become Ocean</em>

Listening to the Anthropocene: John Luther Adams’s Become Ocean

A meditation on an orchestral work that evokes our era of environmental change.
The Shape of Hope

The Shape of Hope

Fishing provides the opportunity to reconsider the grounds for hope in this time of the Anthropocene.
Dueling Manifestos: Responses to an Ecological Crisis

Dueling Manifestos: Responses to an Ecological Crisis

This comparison of the Leap and the Ecomodernist Manifestos finds hope in an ethic of care.
Stopping by Working Woods on a Snowy Evening

Stopping by Working Woods on a Snowy Evening

A take on Robert Frost's famous poem, adapted to reflect changes in Wisconsin forest ownership and conservation.
Building Beaches: Beach Nourishment in the United States

Building Beaches: Beach Nourishment in the United States

A hard look at the soft engineering that goes into our beaches.
Measuring the Anthropocene

Measuring the Anthropocene

In the Anthropocene, or "age of humans," maps open up important but complicated spaces of dialogue about the "human imprint" on earth systems.
Placing the Golden Spike: Uneasy Temporality in the Anthropocene

Placing the Golden Spike: Uneasy Temporality in the Anthropocene

A new exhibit at the UW-Milwaukee Institute for Visual Arts offers a range of imaginative visualizations for the crisis of the Anthropocene.
Why Our Students Should Debate Climate Change

Why Our Students Should Debate Climate Change

Teaching the history of science in an age of climate denialism produces surprising questions about nature, knowledge, and democracy.
Our Climatic Fate? Oreskes and Conway's "Collapse of Western Civilization"

Our Climatic Fate? Oreskes and Conway’s “Collapse of Western Civilization”

Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s tale of our catastrophic future is a provocative hybrid of scholarship and science fiction that's great for the classroom.
Materialized Dreams: Boom and Bust in the Cultural Landscape of West Texas

Materialized Dreams: Boom and Bust in the Cultural Landscape of West Texas

The hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking") boom and an imminent bust in the face of a worldwide oil glut are just the most recent swings in a long history of economic and ecological instability in the mineral-rich Permian basin.
Highly exploratory “what-if” visualizations help policymakers and citizens understand potential climate futures.

Land, Water, and Climate Change in Five Interactive Maps

Five new visualization tools help us explore how climate change might affect the places where land and water meet.
Shored Up: The Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy at the Rockaway Peninsula

Shored Up: The Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy at the Rockaway Peninsula

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy made devastating landfall at the Rockaway Peninsula in New York City, offering forebodings of still more powerful storms to come.
Elizabeth Kolbert

Speaking to Us, Speaking to the World: Elizabeth Kolbert on the Craft of Environmental Journalism

Sarah Dimick sits down with Elizabeth Kolbert to discuss writing in and about the Anthropocene.
Anthropocene Slam

The Anthropocene Slam: Mutiny, Play, and the Everyday

The recent Anthropocene Slam at UW-Madison suggested that play might be a key strategy for survival in the "Age of Humans."
Checkerboard mesa strata

Seven Ways to Sense the Anthropocene

Seven projects that help us to better sense—visualize, hear, count—ecological and social transformations in the "Age of Humans."
Jason deCaires Taylor's underwater sculpture "Anthropocene." Photograph by Jason deCaires Taylor.

The Anthropocene: The Promise and Pitfalls of an Epochal Idea

Has Homo sapiens become a geological actor altering the conditions of life so forcefully that our impacts are being written into the fossil record? If so, what are the implications for how we imagine human history, ethics, power, and responsibility?