Fourteen years ago, on this day, September 30th, 2012,
Barry Commoner, a pioneering environmental scientist and activist, died Sunday at age 95.
Described in 1970 by Time magazine as the “Paul Revere of ecology,” Commoner followed Rachel Carson as America’s most prominent modern environmentalist. He viewed the environmental crisis as a symptom of a fundamentally flawed economic and social system. A biologist and research scientist, he argued that corporate greed, misguided government priorities, and the misuse of technology undermined “the finely sculptured fit between life and its surroundings.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 394ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was Barry Commoner had been a very important figure in global environmental awareness, especially around Project Sunshine and Fallout, and his book Science and Survival in 1966 really was important for sensitising people to the build up of carbon dioxide. There’s a direct line to the 1967 documentary by Roy Battersby, and Commoner had stood for president in 1980
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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References
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Eighteen years ago, on this day, September 28th, 2008,
The 4 Degrees and Beyond International Climate Conference, subtitled Implications of a Global Climate Change of 4+ Degrees for People, Ecosystems and the Earth-system, was held 28–30 September 2009 at Oxford, United Kingdom.[1] The three-day conference had about 140 science, government, NGO and private sector delegates, and included 35 oral presentations and 18 poster presentations
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 386ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that scientists had been banging on the table with increased noise and frustration, fear, whatever you, desperation, whatever you want to call it, for quite a while now, and had hoped that the March 2005 Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change conference at Exeter University would be a turning point, but it hadn’t been, and so some were beginning to think, well, what do we do? What can we expect? Mitigate for two, adapt for four is the slogan that came out. Well, we haven’t mitigated to two, we can’t adapt for four. No one ever assumed we could. We are heading straight into the Hellmouth.
Thespecificcontext was that the UNFCCC process was on a temporary high, with the “Roadmap to Copenhagen”, but everyone knew that even a ‘successful’ negotiation would be grossly inadequate.
What I think we can learn from this is that the scientists have been frustratingly right, if somewhat naive about political power and unable to connect with the civil society, which is frankly largely incapable of connecting with anyone or anything.
What happened next There was another conference of similar ilk in 2011 in Melbourne, but nothing useful came out of that either, we’re all doomed.
Anyway, what’s interesting from this is that it gave a real fillip to CCS in the UK, it put it on the agenda as a possible solution
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
Xx
References
xx
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Tl;dr: academic article about the microbial swingers’ event in the Strait of Hormuz is terrifying stuff.
There’s an Open Access academic article, only 8 pages long, published two weeks, about what happens when all those ships, currently stuck by the Strait of Hormuz closure, get out and about, with new bugs. Fun times. (I came to it via this important read by Charlie Angus)
I remember, in 1991 I think, reading people warning about how the fires set off by Saddam Hussein in his retreat from Kuwait might interrupt the monsoon rains in India that were crucial for feeding a billion people. It didn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean those warning about it were wrong (they never said it would definitely happen) and were irresponsible for raising the possibility.
Before this, I was trying to read diligently from both “left” (The Nation, the Village Voice) and the “right” (National Review etc). The latter really kept returning – again and again (this was the era when environmental regulation on climate might be coming) – to Paul Ehrlich’s “mass famine is INEVITABLE by the end of the 1970s” warnings.
Ehrlich, who died recently, spent decades trying – with limited success – to row back from what he said, to parse those warnings and claim that they were warnings of what COULD happen. He was by no means the most vehement “we’re all going to die soon”-er, but he was the most prominent, and the damage to his credibility was significant.
So, warnings have to be nuanced, but nuance is not what the algorithms which rule us demand. A dilemma, a kind ofcognitive bottleneck.
Which brings us to the Strait of Hormuz
I did not know of the journal “Biol Invasions” – aka Biological Invasions. But why would I? Anyway, it’s unlikely to appear as the guest trade publication on “Have I Got News For You?” because it would definitely harsh everybody’s Friday night jocular vibe.
Anyway, below are some highlights. You could read the whole thing in half an hour, and have nightmares that went on for days.
In the modern history of ship lay-ups (vessels remaining at anchor or dockside for an extended period of time), the number of ships that have been trapped due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is unparalleled. More than 1500 large commercial ships remained idle in the Persian/Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, hereafter referred to collectively as the “Gulf region”, starting on February 28, 2026 (e.g., World Bank 2026). These vessels have arrived with biofouling organisms from a wide range of source regions and are now acquiring (and will likely depart with) extensive biofouling communities of microbes, algae, and invertebrates from the Gulf region. This massive intermingling of ships and biofouling will result in the inevitable release of non-indigenous species (NIS) at the lay-up sites and in the spread of marine species across the globe once the idle ships resume their trade routes.
The underlying inevitability of impending species translocations is based on the typical sigmoidal (s-shaped) curve that characterizes biofouling accumulation on submerged surfaces (Daly et al. 2025). Biofouling on static surfaces can reach the rapid growth phase after 10 days (e.g., Davidson et al. 2020), which is longer than typical residence times of less than 2 days for cargo vessels in most ports. When ships are idle beyond these time frames, biofouling develops aggressively as antifouling coatings become compromised from lack of movement (e.g., Casse and Swain 2006). (emphasis added)
There are various reasons why you might get a bunch of ships at anchor in one place – festivals, mothballed military etc etc. And we’ve known about the problem for yonks.
“For example, the invasion of the Australasian barnacle Austrominius modestus to western Europe during World War II was linked to New Zealand ships being held in English ports while awaiting convoy escorts (Southward 1998). “
Southward AJ (1998) New observations on barnacles (Crustacea: cirripedia) of the Azores region. Arquipelago Life Mar Sci 16A:11–27
And here come the niches, doing their niche things…
Although a variety of vessel types and sizes operate in this region, the routine presence of a considerable number of very large ships (with correspondingly extensive submerged hull surfaces and niche areas vulnerable to biofouling) from around the world amplifies their exposure to diverse biofouling communities.
Turns out the whole damn thing is a Thunder Dome for the survival of the shittiest, a Hegsethian Petri Dish.
The Persian/Arabian Gulf is a semi enclosed sea with an average depth of 35 m, characterized by high salinity and temperature, limited water exchange, and strong evaporation (Joydas et al. 2024). Summer surface-water temperatures can reach approximately 38 °C, and winter temperatures range between 15 and 20 °C (Alosairi et al. 2011), with salinities often exceeding 40 psu (Kashkooli et al. 2022). Recent data also revealed a significant increase in the spatial and temporal extent and average number of marine heat waves in this region (Paradan et al. 2025). Extreme environmental pressures, combined with coastal industrialization and urbanization, have also directly reduced biodiversity in Gulf ecosystems (Naser 2014). These conditions are relevant to biosecurity risk because the remaining stress-tolerant taxa are more likely to survive transport, persist during vessel lay-up, and establish in recipient regions with similar or stressful environmental conditions.
Here’s a couple of maps.
It doesn’t get lighter or brighter.
“Ship biofouling also poses hidden risks. Many biofouling species are globally distributed and adapted to diverse environmental conditions (e.g., Viard and Tepolt 2025). Introducing new genetic diversity into established non-indigenous populations can promote genetic introgression, accelerating adaptation, and increasing their ability to spread and persist across a wider range of conditions (Touchard et al. 2023). In particular, the warm waters of the Gulf region are likely to select for heat-tolerant genotypes, which, if introduced to thermally-limited populations, may give them a greater adaptive buffer against future warming (Griffiths et al. 2021). “
Oh crap
Stressed ecosystems, such as industrial ports, are highly vulnerable to bioinvasion because environmental disturbances reduce community resistance (e.g., Stachowicz et al. 1999). By suppressing native species, opening up ecological niches, and increas ing resource availability, disturbances allow invasive, fast-growing opportunist (e.g., tolerant and resilient) species to establish themselves; the added influence of high resource availability may further promote invasibility (Crooks et al. 2011). In the Gulf region, invasibility is paired with massive shipping volume, providing ample opportunity for the development of NIS assemblages.
Of course, there is routine “IWC” – “in-water cleaning” of ship hulls and niche areas. But
The application of IWC will surely be incentivized because of the direct benefits on ship operations, particularly reduced drag and fuel consumption (e.g., Schultz et al. 2011). However, this scenario is unlikely for most vessels given the urgency of evacuating stranded seafarers and restoring shipping movements, and due to limited regional IWC capacity and operational constraints associated with safety and logistics. (emphasis added)
Turns out niches can be, in the old Multi-Level Perspective, places where BAD SHIT happens, and then comes up and knocks the regime and the seascape around the chops. Ha ha ha, you read it here first.
As a result, demand will likely also shift to subsequent ports of call. The capacity of IWC in many recipient ports may also be insufficient to accommodate the anticipated surge in needed services, and cleaning operations may be restricted or prohibited in some jurisdictions, creating additional bottlenecks to mitigate biosecurity risks. Finally, the current trade disruptions and shifting shipping routes are expected to reshape maritime networks and port connectivity, expanding and making less predictable biosecurity risks linked to Gulf vessel traffic.
The authors, bless them recommend
“We therefore strongly encourage a coordinated global network of safe and effective IWC services”
Yeah, good luck with that.
It’s popcorn- o’clock!!
So anyway, I learnt three words – sessile, propagoule and introgression.
And, because my brain is (quat)raining quatrains right now, these –
“the system will change because our very long-term project for democracy has made the system obsolete.”
Professor Mark Purcell has new book, Discovering Democracy in the Work of Frantz Fanon. It is both a close examination of Fanon’s work and a continuation of my ongoing project to imagine a radical democratic alternative to the current world. He kindly agreed to an interview (below). But first, more about the book.
In the book he argues that we on the Left, broadly speaking, are sick. We suffer from what Nietzsche called ressentiment, which is to say that we are only able to think reactively. Our self-image is as anticolonialists, anticapitalists, antiracists, abolitionists, and so on. We consider only how we can destroy what we hate. Our actions are to oppose, resist, decolonize, unsettle, defund, abolish, cancel. As a result, we are beset by affects, in Spinoza’s sense, that weaken us: sadness, rage, indignation, grievance, and so on. Trapped in our obsession with destruction, we rarely think in terms of production, of how we might imagine and create new lives in common. We forget to examine our own power, and we don’t practice using it. He argues that we need to cultivate affects that make us stronger: joy, delight, gaiety, gladness, wonder, love. We need to stop thinking in terms of resistance to dominant systems of oppression. We need to turn our attention, instead, to our own strength, to realize what we are capable of, and start using our power to create the world we want.
In much of Fanon’s work, he suffers acutely from ressentiment. He can think only in terms of destroying racism and colonialism. Purcell call this Fanon “the major Fanon,” and he worries this is the one we have taken up into our own thinking. But his examination of Fanon’s work revealed another Fanon, one he call “the minor Fanon.” This Fanon thinks in terms of action and creation. He notices and affirms the power of Black people and the colonized, and he tells us of the many ways they are using that power to create new lives in common. The book ends by urging us to leave aside the major Fanon, and to discover what it might be like to think, instead, with the minor Fanon.
(That text above is from Purcell himself). Here’s the interview, conducted via email.
1 A little bit about yourself, where you grew up, your academic career.
I grew up outside Washington DC, went to Duke for undergrad, then UCLA for my Ph.D. in Geography in 1998. I have been at the University of Washington, in first Geography and then Planning, since 1999.
2. First of, for the benefit of people who don’t know – who was Frantz Fanon, how has his work been put to use in the past and why does he “matter” to us now? How does he fit in with your “ongoing project to imagine a radical democratic alternative to the current world.”
Fanon was a Martiniquan psychiatrist and political thinker-and-activist who produced foundational analyses of both racism in France and colonialism in Algeria (and Africa). My argument in the book is that the way he matters to us now is as an anti-racist and anti-colonial thinker. That is, we follow him in taking our agenda to be: destroy racism and destroy colonialism. But this is, I argue, the wrong way for us to think. We should, instead, devote all our attention to our own power, learn what we are capable of, and begin using our power to produce the world we want.
3. When was the book conceived, how long did it take to write? What were the easiest and hardest parts of the writing process?
The book was conceived when re-reading The Wretched of the Earth, where Fanon has some vibrant passages that resonate with my conception of democracy. That inspired me to investigate the rest of his work for more of the same. But I found much less than I had hoped.
Once I completed the reading and the thinking, the writing of the book was pretty quick, it took something like a summer. The easiest part of the writing was the writing itself. It says what I needed to say, and it all came out of me pretty smoothly. The hardest part was finding a publisher for the book, because I wrote it on its own terms, without any advance contact with publishers. Then I presented them a fully finished product, and so it was hard to find a ‘fit’ with publishers’ lists.
4. In the email announcing the book you write “As a result, we are beset by affects, in Spinoza’s sense, that weaken us: sadness, rage, indignation, grievance, and so on. Trapped in our obsession with destruction, we rarely think in terms of production, of how we might imagine and create new lives in common. We forget to examine our own power, and we don’t practice using it. I argue that we need to cultivate affects that make us stronger: joy, delight, gaiety, gladness, wonder, love. We need to stop thinking in terms of resistance to dominant systems of oppression. We need to turn our attention, instead, to our own strength, to realize what we are capable of, and start using our power to create the world we want.”
I was struck by that and then got to thinking about how you might tell whether doing what felt good might not lead into a “smugosphere” – where we keep on doing things because we can (we know how to do them, they give us status tokens within our subcultures) but they don’t really change “the system” and are in fact a consolation prize. What would ‘minor Fanon’ – or yourself – say in response?
I think that negative scenario is a pretty good description of the ressentiment we are trapped in today. Smugness is a negative affect. It opposes “the system,” defines it as wrong, and then, secondarily, defines oneself as right, but only because one is anti-system. Then one stands around and virtue signals to other anti-systemers, which amounts to nothing other than incanting the wrongness of the system. This makes us feel strong, but that is a chimera. It makes us weak. The project of democracy I argue for in the book produces positive affects. It is not at all something easy, something we ‘know how to do.’ It is precisely a project in which we do what we are inexpert at — managing our affairs ourselves — that we learn as we go, that affirms itself (rather than negating the system). It orients itself to itself; it does not orient itself to the system. The system will not change because we opposed it, smashed it, overcame it. 200 years of “anti” politics is enough evidence of that. It will change because our very long-term project for democracy has made the system obsolete.
5. Who do you hope will read the book, and what do you hope they will get out of it.
First, those who intuit that radical democracy is the right way forward, so we can find each other, and augment each other’s strength. Second, those trapped in ressentiment, so they might see the need to let go of their ruinous mode of thinking.
Of course, that doesn’t narrow down the things I could write about (I mean, everything, other than that I exist: merci, Rene!).
Specifically, then. A couple of days ago one of those ‘things could be much much better than they are’ reports got released. And the Guardian, bless its centrist socks, ran an op-ed by the authors.
I did a keyword search for ‘movements’ on the latter, which came up blank. So then I wrote a two-part thread on BSky.
It ran thus-
Another day, another worthless (worse than useless?) ‘The cat should wear a bell’report about how everything can be wonderful.
No mention of social movements.
Apparently the state and corporates will do all this wonderful stuff un-bidden. Because some academics wrote a report.
1/2
And part two
I can’t take this shit seriously, and I would encourage other people to do likewise.
I search “hey, we can save the world, here’s how” articles for the word ‘movements’. No mentions gets a hard pass from me.
The first post got 5 reposts, on quote post, 16 likes and a save.
The second one got some comments, a repost and 4 likes.
It is to these comments that I now turn.
One person on Bluesky typed
How to make it happen is the next step not a replacement step.
There were several things I could have said. I chose to keep it relatively neutral –
In my experience these reports never have an “implementation” sequel. Happy to be proven wrong…
To which came
*We* need to be the implementation sequel.
A map isn’t worthless just because it comes without a car.
To which I replied
A map tells you the terrain. A castle in the air doesn’t.
I suspect we agree on a lot, and could/can fruitfully disagree.
This platform isn’t the format, imo. So I will write A (sic) post and you can respond if you like.
Which brings you up to speed, if you’re still here.
Life is short and there are moorhens to say hello to (it’s been far too long), so I will frame this around a series of questions. (These may be leading questions, they may not be the right questions, and I am happy to be told they are not, and to be told what ARE the right questions.)
Did the report (which you can read here) have anything new about new strategies for a world where hope is dying, where our situational awareness is being destroyed not merely by accelerating corporate propaganda and government secrecy but also AI slop?
Nope. I am sorry, but having only one reference to social movements, and quite a glib one in the introduction, is just not on.
(“civil society” appears not at all. Apparently this is all going to be done by technocrats in bureaucracies. Yeah. Sure.)
Are vague invocations of “we” “being the implementation” helpful?
No. If anything, that sort of statement is more likely to have us staying within our smugospheres, doing things that make us feel good/give us status (or continue to deprive us of status perhaps?) and are easy because we’ve been doing them for ages, independently of their actual or likely success.
Why might someone push back against my performative world-weariness?
Nobody likes some smug performative world-weary asshole who pisses on everybody’s chips and apparently has no solutions of his own. (Actually, I have plenty, at a microlevel, which is what is required to make the meso and macro happen. But I totally understand how somebody might assume I don’t, either because they don’t know my stuff, aren’t interested in finding out or wouldn’t find it convenient to find out because then I would be less easily chided/dismissed).
I keep meaning to put all this shit together in one place, but never do. Anyhoos, one the social movements, incentive structures and our inevitable doom, see here.
Is this report much of a map of the existing terrain?
No.
You haven’t read the whole thing, how can you be sure?
I brown M&Med it.
Eh?
The Van Halen test. I asked some specific questions via my old friend Ctrl F.
Will you find any of these words? (Spoiler: no, so, not much of a map, imo)
Advertising
Artificial intelligence
Buen vivir
Permaculture
Positional goods
Predatory delay
Propaganda
Repression
Veganism
Vegetarianism
Only two mentions of capitalism, and one of those is a reference.
“More generally, the development of Western industrial capitalism since the 18th century is closely linked to a system based on the international division of labour, the mobilization of natural and human resources at the world level, and the European powers’ military and colonial domination over the rest of the planet.” (p.115)
and
Nogues-Marco, P. (2021). “Measuring colonial extraction: The East India Company’s rule and the drain of wealth (1757–1858)”. In: Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics 2.1, pp. 154–195.
Does this report, coming in at 136 pages, have anything other than another international body that will be instantly captured/de-fanged to suggest?
No. I don’t think it does (but I have yet to read all 136 pages)
Do these authors give any indication at all of knowing what a car is?
Not to me they don’t.
Are our metaphors all outa whack?
Why yes, yes they are.
What, ultimately, is the responsibility of intellectuals?
“There’s a huge cultural, intellectual, political battle that is going on. And we all have a role to play,” said Thomas Piketty, a co-director of the WIL and a professor at the Paris School of Economics.
Well, sure. But for me, you can’t go past Noam Chomsky – it is the responsibility of intellectuals to expose lies and tell the truth.
And the truth I keep coming back to is that ”we” (note the quote marks) are losing, and have been losing quite badly since the 70s (not that before then was exactly great).
And if intellectuals are going to spend the bulk off their time building these probably necessary “visions” but NOT offer a fair assessment of how “we” have been failing on these questions for well over fifty years, then I do not think they are either exposing lies (sweet little lies we have been telling ourselves) or telling the truth.
James Baldwin said it best – “not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
The report doesn’t help us face our failures since (before) the 1972 Stockholm conference, at a state, corporate, civil society or social movements level.
This is by technocrats, for technocrats, and will sink without trace. Meanwhile, the emissions will climb, the impacts will hit ever harder.
We are near the beginning of the Fafocene. Buckle up, mofos.
That report, btw –
Chancel, L., Mohren, C., Moshrif, R., Odersky, M., Piketty, T., Somanchi, A., et al. (2026), The Global Justice Report: A Plan for Equality & Prosperity Within Planetary Boundaries, World Inequality Lab (gjp.wid.world).
Who are you – where did you grow up, what contact did you have with ‘nature’? (There’s good evidence to suggest that the main determinant of people getting properly switched on to environmental issues is unstructured play with minimal supervision in nature before age 11).
I grew up in the North Woods of North America—the band of mixed forest that stretches across Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota—and within biking or driving distance of Lake Superior. It’s a stunningly beautiful place, but the landscape wears many scars that are just under the surface—in the neighborhood I grew up in, all the trees are the same age, and some of them take root in a kind of slate gray soil made of crushed mine rock. It is a landscape rich with nonhuman life, but it is extraordinarily anthropogenic.
I remembering writing something back when I was 15 or so that mused on all of these things, on the many walks and hikes and drives that I had taken through the continent—saying that these were the reasons I had become an environmentalist. I still think that’s probably true. Doubtless, they are a big part of why I became an environmental historian, too.
2) Tell us a little about your academic background – undergrad what where why, ditto for masters and PhD.
I grew up in an academic family—both my parents were scientists. And I went to a small college for my undergraduate degree (Amherst College, in New England), and loved it. There were a lot of draws for me at the time (and I was extremely lucky to have a family who encouraged me to do essentially whatever I wanted for my undergraduate)—the size, the setting, an open curriculum, and so on. Though I’ve always loved reading history books, I went in as a music major, wrote my senior thesis in it, and only picked up history as a double major.
While graduate school had certainly been a possibility, it took me several years to apply. I was disappointed with non-academic work, and though I figured there wouldn’t be a job at the other end of a history PhD, it would be a nice way to spend six years writing a book. In the end, I ended up with a book and a wonderful job.
It was a rocky path. I ended up switching my supervisor quite early on, and both my new advisors and my fellow PhD students radically changed my approach to history in a number of ways (a much bigger focus on labor and capitalism). I also think I probably came out the other end a better person—or at least a more thoughtful one. A couple of postdocs later, I’ve ended up at UCL.
3) In a nutshell (sorry!) what does your book – The Hobo: A History of America’s First Climate Migrants (Princeton University Press, 2026) – argue, and where did it “come from” – what gaps in the previous understandings was it filling, what ‘myths’ is it overthrowing, or at the least complicating?
Hobos were migrant workers because of an unpredictable climate and a steam-powered energy regime.
When we say “hobos,” we mean a group of long-distance migrant workers in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century U.S., who moved seasonally between cities and the countryside. They existed in quasi-legal—really, mostly-illegal—spaces in the American West, dodging railroad police and working handshake contracts for bad bosses and rare but substantial payment.
And they existed for two reasons: First, the extraction industries hobos worked in had enormous year-to-year variability because of the climatic unpredictability of the American West. Employers never knew how many laborers they would need in a given season, so they hired migrants to plug the gaps. Second, no one managed to automate these industries, in large part because steam engines were big, bulky, and slow, unable to help much with harvesting wheat, cutting lumber, or construction. You needed human muscle power.
In the end, with new energy forms that could support much more miniaturized power, employers needed far fewer workers, and the mass migrant class vanished within basically a single decade.
I suppose relatively few people have thought about migrants environmentally. But this argument is less about gaps, and more about connecting disparate histories and asking what it means to consider them all together. Hobos are wonderful subjects in part because they travel so widely and work in so many different sectors—if you look through their eyes, you can see basically every industry of the American West at the same time.
4) Some readers will be thinking “but if you’re ‘rootless’ and have no love of/incentive of a particular place, then surely your attitude is going to be ‘use it up, move on’ – hardly an ecological example” – how would you respond?
There’s quite a number of ways I might respond to that. For one, some hobos often did love the environments they passed through—that was one big reason to go on frankly impractical cross-country trips in the first place. (Still is, as my own photo rolls can testify.) And their work absolutely orbited extraction and exhaustion, but this wasn’t really because they were rootless—it’s the other way around. Their work, and hobos themselves, moved rapidly to follow new and unexploited resources. In the end, pretty much everyone in the American West participated in this economy of relentless extraction—including farmers and ranchers whose families put down roots (ha, pun) for generations.
5) What were your favourite and least favourite bits of the process?
I love writing. Putting together everything into a narrative is a delight—from the outlining to the drafting to the chucking it in a bin and starting over. Writing a book is hard work; writing one that you like is nearly impossible. But I enjoy the challenge.
6) Who should read it (well, obviously, everyone should) and why? How would it help us make sense of our current and near future dilemmas/trilemmas/quadlemmas/n-lemmas?
You nailed it—it’s a book for absolutely everyone.
I really did try to write a book that basically anyone can pick up and read. That said, outside of people who want to read about hobos for their own sake, I think it’s for those interested in histories of the environment (obviously), capitalism, and specifically climate and energy. I think it’s also startlingly relevant to people who want to think about our own climate crisis.
Hobos faced an unstable climate and an energy transition, all while dealing with extremely precarious employment and threats of automation. In some industries, hobos were spectacularly unsuccessful in facing these challenges, and essentially disappeared from the workforce. In other industries, they successfully mobilized to defend labor and reduce precarity for everyone. Overall, their best moments came out of solidarity, and their worst out of prejudice and infighting.
As I write in the book, the situation hobos found themselves in doesn’t precisely map onto the one we face in the present day. Their climate disasters weren’t anthropogenic; the world was still being connected; the energy systems were different. But if you want to read a book showing how climate change and energy transitions changed life for the most destitute people in a society, read this one.
7) What next for you? What’s the next project?
It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that, although I’m a very fast writer on the day-to-day, projects seem to take a while. Writing is by far the fastest and most fun part of a book project for me; research is where I really tend to sweat it out and tinker with things for years. All of which is to say—there are a few different things that are brewing, including a probable second monograph on energy and American settler colonialism, but that and the others will all take a while to see the light of day.
8) Anything else you’d like to say.
Buy my book, of course! It’s quite affordable! Bookshop.org (US), (UK), or from the PUP website! (And the usual exhortations that requesting it at libraries, buying it from brick-and-mortar stores, and leaving reviews, are all great ways to help it out.)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 336ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that since 1977 the Department of Energy had been hosting conferences, famously Miami Beach in March of 77 and commissioning reports about carbon dioxide build up. The Carter administration was “on it” as it were – or the Carter administration wasn’t, but people working in the DOE were. And I think a lot of this is probably down to a nuclear physicist called Alvin Weinberg. Anyway, here we are in April of 79 and the crucial things here are that
Tom Wigley of the Climatic Research Unit was present and presenting.
b) Crispin Tickell, then the consigliere for Roy Jenkins, was present at this meeting. We know this thanks to Tickell’s October 1979 article in Europe magazine.
The specific context was that by 1979 smart people were beginning to “freak out”, in a very measured and contained way.
What I think we can learn from this is that we have known for so long. And done so little (well, made the whole shituation much worse).
What happened next:
Nature ran an editorial in May 1979 that namechecked this conference. The DOE asked people like Schelling to do a report on the societal implications that was released in early 1980 and whatever progress was being made towards tackling the carbon dioxide problem was halted with the coming of the Ronald Reagan gang in January of 1981 and here we are completely fine. Fuck. Risk.
Twenty three years ago, on this day, February 18, 2003,
This special coal fires edition of the International Journal of Coal Geology is a by-product of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) symposium entitled Coal Fires Burning Around the World: A Global Catastrophe, held on February 18, 2003 in Denver, CO. The purpose of the symposium, organized and convened by Glenn B. Stracher of East Georgia College, Robert B. Finkelman of the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, VA, and Tammy P. Taylor of Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM, was to disclose the severity of the coal fires problem to the scientific, engineering, and lay communities and to promote interest in the interdisciplinary study of this environmental catastrophe.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 376ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that scientists had been measuring carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere accurately since 1958, and had been speculating about shitfuckery of monumental proportions, And from the late 70s that speculation had firmed up, there were various efforts to disprove or to test the idea significantly. For example, the Charney Report. But these had come to naught because of politicians’ ignorance and a lack of a social movement/civil society push.
It’s fairly elementary. 19th century physics, Greenhouse gases trap heat. Carbon dioxide is one, not the only greenhouse gas. If you put lots more of it into the atmosphere, you will get more heat. Take a look at Venus..
The specific context was that by 2003 it was clear that the United States, under George W Bush was not going to be any better, in fact, possibly even worse than his dad, and that there was going to be hell to pay.
Of course, that hell would be paid, in the first instance, by all the other species on the planet, and people, mostly not rich and white and people not yet born. But hell has a way of catching up with you. And here we are in 2026.
What I think we can learn from this is that the warnings have been endless, and there is a subset of humanity that just doesn’t give a fuck, and they are able to hire all sorts of goons, physical goons like ICE, intellectual goons like, well, frankly, most of academia, including humanities and well, it’s their planet. We just cling to the edges of it
What happened next: Bush kept being Bush. He was then, from sort of 2002-3 onwards, bigging up” technology”, which is always their answer, regardless of how implausible it is.
And the emissions and the concentrations and the impacts they kept making themselves felt.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Swedish-American meteorologist who first explained the large-scale motions of the atmosphere in terms of fluid mechanics. His work contributed to developing meteorology as a science. Rossby first theorized about the existence of the jet stream in 1939, and that it governs the easterly movement of most weather. U.S. Army Air Corps pilots flying B-29 bombing missions across the Pacific Ocean during World War II proved the jet stream’s existence. The pilots found that when they flew from east to west, they experienced slower arrival times and fuel shortage problems. When flying from west to east, however, they found the opposite to be true. Rossby created mathematical models (Rossby equations) for computerized weather prediction (1950).
and
John von Neumann Born 28 Dec 1903; died 8 Feb 1957
Hungarian-American mathematician who made important contributions in quantum physics, logic, meteorology, and computer science. He invented game theory, the branch of mathematics that analyses strategy and is now widely employed for military and economic purposes. During WW II, he studied the implosion method for bringing nuclear fuel to explosion and he participated in the development of the hydrogen bomb. He also set quantum theory upon a rigorous mathematical basis. In computer theory, von Neumann did much of the pioneering work in logical design, in the problem of obtaining reliable answers from a machine with unreliable components, the function of “memory,” and machine imitation of “randomness.”[Image left: Von Neumann with ENIAC computer.]
John von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered…, by Norman MacRae. – book suggestion.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 295-297ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was these were two seriously smart human beings.
The specific context was Rossby was born the same year Arrhenius’s paper on carbon dioxide build-up was published, lol.
What I think we can learn from this – I do wish von Neumann had lasted a bit longer – I think he might have taken more interest in CO2 build-up. But this is idle speculation and dreaming that a white saviour might have saved us. Nowt was going to save us.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
The battle for the public mind is never-ending. And one of the key weapons remains… wait for it… books.
This below is inspired by reading Royce Kurmelovs’ review of a new tiresome pronuclear abundance tome that makes utterly baseless allegations about the funding behind “Friends of the Earth.” (Full disclosure, Royce is a friend, we’ve collaborated in the past and I had a very minor role in the research of this review).
A book is a “hook” – the author(s) get, er, booked, to appear on radio shows, tv programmes. The book is excerpted in newspapers, which are then quoted by columnists in papers and by politicians in parliament. The book can be the excuse for a tour of cities. The book gets you on podcasts. The book can get turned into instagram posts and tiktok videos.
None of this is new, but it is worth remembering.
Two particular (albeit American) examples should be part of any intelligent media-observer’s toolkit.
The first is the statement by Julian Simon about what the “conservative” movement needed. This from Jane Meyer tells you what you need to know.
His father evidently lost his mother’s fortune, motivating Simon to make his own. On Wall Street, he became a hugely successful partner at Salomon Brothers, where he was an early leader in the lucrative new craze for leveraged buyouts. But what neither Olin nor Simon had was influence over the next generation. “We are careening with frightening speed towards collectivism,” Simon warned. Only an ideological battle could save the country, in Simon’s view. “What we need is a counter-intelligentsia. … [It] can be organized to challenge our ruling ‘new class’ — opinion makers,” Simon wrote. “Ideas are weapons — indeed the only weapons with which other ideas can be fought.” He argued, “Capitalism has no duty to subsidize its enemies.” Private and corporate foundations, he said, must cease “the mindless subsidizing of colleges and universities whose departments of politics, economics and history are hostile to capitalism.” Instead, they “must take pains to funnel desperately needed funds to scholars, social scientists and writers who understand the relationship between political and economic liberty,” as he put it. “They must be given grants, grants, and more grants in exchange for books, books, and more books.” Under Simon’s guidance, the Olin foundation tried to fund the new “counterintelligentsia.” At first, it tried supporting little-known colleges where conservative ideas — and money — were welcome. But Simon and his associates soon realized that this was a losing strategy. If the Olin foundation wanted impact, it needed to infiltrate prestigious universities, especially the Ivy League.
The second is the Joan Peters debacle. Somebody wrote a book, published under her name in 1984, about how there weren’t any Palestinians in the 19th century – “a land without people for a people without a land” stuff, and the US academics lapped it up. Then along came Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky… I URGE you to read Chomsky’s account, here.
The beauty of the book technique is that – if it comes from a ‘reputable’ publisher – it gives any old bullshit argument a heft, a solidity, it doesn’t deserve. It sells copies (publisher happy) and the author gets exposure, and bandwidth gets taken up, nonsense talking points get repeated and regurgitated, no matter how many times the book is “demolished” (see Chomsky above)
