In my opinion (but I’m not alone) Andy Revkin (Wikipedia, his substack) is one of the giants of climate change reporting. His 1988 reporting, putting James Hansen’s pivotal testimony in broader context, and his later Dot Earth blog for the New York Times would be enough, on their own, to cement his status. But there is much more to say. Please read and share this excellent interview he has generously given to All Our Yesterdays. (Also, suggest other people to be interviewed!)
1. A little bit about yourself – where you were born, grew up, how you found yourself doing journalism.
I was born and raised in Rhode Island, a lucky circumstance that came with lots of access to the sea, from snorkeling to sailing to fishing. Some great high school teachers led me to ecology, ocean science and resource management. I headed toward a career in marine biology while at Brown University but after I won a traveling fellowship that took me around the world, I shifted to a focus on writing about the environment and science instead of doing the research. There is a lot more on my journey to, and within, journalism in this Sustain What post: Can There Be Passion and Detachment in Environmental Journalism?
2. Do you remember when and how you first heard about carbon dioxide build-up, and what you thought?
Late in 1984, my second year at Science Digest magazine, I was asked to write an article about nuclear winter – the hypothesis that vast plumes of smoke from cities burned in a nuclear war could reach the stratosphere and dangerously chill Earth. My reporting at the now-threatened National Center for Atmospheric Research introduced me to the supercomputers and models already being used to study global warming from accumulating heat-trapping carbon dioxide. That cover story ran in March 1985 and my first
cover story on global warming, at Discover Magazine, ran three years later. At first in my reporting, climate change felt like a simple pollution problem (like smog, acid rain, etc.) that would respond to regulation. But even in that first big story there were hints this was a vastly harder challenge. I’m glad I included this line, which really nailed a core reality: “[E]ven as the developed nations of the world cut back on fossil fuel use, there will be no justifiable way to prevent the Third World from expanding its use of coal and oil. How can the developed countries expect that China, for example, which has plans to double its coal production in the next 15 years in order to spur development, will be willing or even able to change course?” (Folks can download a pdf of the October 1988 Discover Magazine cover story here.)
3. What happened in 1983 that brought you to the environmental beat?
My youth in Rhode Island and my education all drew me toward environmental science and related challenges. That carried forward into my journalism. My first big prize-winning magazine feature story, in 1983, was on worldwide perils from worker exposure to the weed killer Paraquat. That also led my editors to sustain that focus.
4. That period, 1985-1992, was – it turns out – foundational (in good ways and bad). What are some of your most vivid memories of that period?
After my nuclear winter story was published in 1985, I quit Science Digest to join a sailing friend delivering a sailboat from Dubai to the island Republic of Maldives. Spending time in those low islets reinforced my interest in environmental and social change. I then moved to a reporting job at the Los Angeles Times, writing about regional pollution issues, wildfire risk and the like before returning East to magazines and that global warming cover story. Doing that climate reporting, I’ll never forget meeting a diplomat from the low-lying Maldives wandering halls at a big climate meeting in Toronto in June 1988, musing on how his country, most threatened by warming, was essentially invisible in the discussions. In 1989 I left my magazine job and headed to the Amazon rain forest for three months to do research for my first book, The Burning Season, on the murder of forest defender Chico Mendes. That experience reinforced for me how most environmental issues are symptoms of societal issues (Brazil’s military dictatorship at the time was promoting policies fostering clearing of the Amazon and that threatened the rights of the region’s inhabitants). The biggest insight that emerged for me through those years came in 1991, when when I was writing my second book, Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast. In that book, published in 1992, I posited that humanity’s planet-changing surge was taking us out of the Holocene and into a “a geological age of our own making” that I proposed calling the “Anthrocene.” This was a decade before Paul Crutzen and other earth-system scientists formalized a proposal for the Anthropocene. (I ended up being a member of the Anthropocene Working Group from 2010 through 2016.)
5. What of your own work are you proudest, and why?
“The Burning Season” is by far the hardest and best thing I ever wrote; my 2,810-post, 100,000-comment Dot Earth blog for The New York Times has been described by others as a ground-breaking model for a learning-journey style of journalism on complex subjects; I think a few of my songs will stand the test of time – among those, “Arlington” and (hopefully) “Life is a Band.”
6. Who else would you like to give a shout out to, in terms of climate reporting/advocacy/activism (go as long as you like)
My shout-out would be to the full community of tens of thousands of people devoting time to bending curves toward progress on climate understanding (from basic research to education) and affordable access to clean energy (from basic research to policy to communication to innovation and commerce). That’s because there’s no single strategy, tactic, focal point, or person that matters most. And it’s because a diversity of responses to this kind of problem is not only essential; it’s also inevitable given human nature. Read my writing on the concept of “response diversity” as a sustainability strategy for lots more (here on climate solutions, here specifically on activism)
7. Complete this sentence “It’s important that we remember the (long) histories behind climate science, policy and activism because…”
…a focus on day-to-day politics and debate can miss vital long-timescale realities that really shape what societies can, and can’t, do addressing grand challenges of all kinds – from global warming to immigration to poverty alleviation to public health.
8. What next? What are you working on at the moment that you’d like to give a shout out to
I’ve had several book ideas simmering for a long while, but one’s life gets shorter every day and it’s also time for me to get more of my music out in the world. Since the mid 1990s, songwriting and performing have been a vital second communication pathway for me. Through this year, I’m working on a couple of albums of original songs, building on my one album, “A Very Fine Line,” released way back in 2013. Readers can learn about my songwriting side and listen to heaps of music in this Sustain What post: When Reporting Gives Way to Singing.
Lord Ritchie-Calder’s essay “Mortgaging the Old Homestead” had been published in various outlets (Australia, US). Sports Illustrated readers expressed their thanks (and alarm) on this day 56 years ago.
With climate change at the top of Australians’ worry list (recently and briefly), the denialists in the Liberal Party decide to psychologise basic physics. Bravo!
Failed Presidential aspirant John Kerry is diverting attention from the Obama administration’s uselessness (well, worse) by pointing the finger at other assholes.
Seven very long years ago, on this day, February 15, 2019,
“On Friday 15 February 2019, around 15,000 young people in towns and cities across the country walked out of school in protest at government inaction on the climate crisis. A month later, as part of a global strike, they did the same again – this time in more than three times their previous number.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 411ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that we’ve been expecting children to redeem our skanky adult asses for decades (or centuries).
The specific context was that the IPCC’s report had come out. Greta Thunberg was holding her school strikes in Stockholm. “Change” was in the air.
What I think we can learn from this is that without organisation, these things go up like a rocket and come down like a stick. They’re like a fist when you open your palm.
But we forget, we “hope” and, well, rinse and repeat…
What happened next: You could do worse than read this and weep –
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 climate is nearing tipping points. Changes are beginning to appear and there is a potential for explosive changes, effects that would be irreversible, if we do not rapidly slow fossil-fuel emissions over the next few decades. As Arctic sea ice melts, the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight and speeds melting. As the tundra melts, methane, a strong greenhouse gas, is released, causing more warming. As species are exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.
Hansen, J. 2009. Coal-fired power stations are death factories. Close them. Guardian, 15 February.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that we have known since the fifties that putting enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere was going to have consequences. We didn’t know how big, how soon, but by the late 1970s, that was becoming clear…
The specific context was that the UK government was busy bullshitting about allowing the building of new “carbon-capture-ready” coal-fired power stations. For fuck’s sake.
What I think we can learn from this is that scientists can tell the truth all they like. The truth, on its own, will not – in fact – set you free, no matter what St John wants you to believe.
What happened next: Hansen kept writing and sciencing. The politicians kept ignoring him and thousands of other scientists. So did, for the most part, the publics of the Western democracies.
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.
Thirty six years ago, on this day, February 14th, 1990,
“The command sequence was then compiled and sent to Voyager 1, with the images taken at 04:48 GMT on February 14, 1990.[19] At that time, the distance between the spacecraft and Earth was 40.47 astronomical units (6,055 million kilometers, 3,762 million miles).[20]”
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Voyager had been launched years earlier, and they turned round and looked at the earth and took the photo. There’s a nice story about how it got found, just like one pixel.
What I think we can learn from this is that beautiful images are sometimes found by accident. See also Earthrise in 1968 as pushed for by Stewart Brand.
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.
Thirty two years ago, on this day, February 14 1994, Friends of the Earth UK tried to get councils to take action on climate change.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the UNFCCC had been signed in 1992. Part of it was “Local Agenda 21” – we were all supposed to be doing governance together…
The specific context was that FoE was trying, bless it, to get the system to change itself from within. It had already tried this sort of thing with environmental issues more broadly a couple of years previously. Twenty plus years of boredom and futility and all that…
What I think we can learn from this is that we had our chances, we blew them.
What happened next: FoE kept campaigning. People kept ignoring them. Emissions and atmospheric concentrations kept climbing.
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.
PARIS, Feb 13 (Reuters) – Carbon capture is not a solution for the energy transition and political leaders need to provide real, non-greenwashed, commitments to encourage investment, Andrew Forrest, executive chairman of Fortescue Metals, said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the 50th anniversary meeting of the International Energy Agency, Australian billionaire Forrest said the investment community needs a level-playing field and honest answers from political leaders on phasing out fossil fuels in order to invest.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 424ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that CCS has been around as a theoretical “solution” to climate change for fifty years, since Cesar Marchetti brain-farted it out at an IIASA conference.
The specific context was that Twiggy Forrest has been banging on about climate change for a little while now.
What I think we can learn from this is that CCS is a silly fantasy, but that’s all we have left now.
What happened next: Money kept getting thrown at CCS.
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.
Thirty five years ago, on this day, February 12, 1991 a report about
“Reducing the Impact of the Greenhouse Effect.” by the Senate Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology (CA 6703).
See the committee details, contents of the report, terms of reference and Chapter 1 overview here.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that various Australian parliamentarians (the smarter ones) had been warning about carbon dioxide build-up since the 1970s. In the late 1980s the issue finally hit the headlines, and the obvious question was “well, what do we DO about it?”
The specific context was that the Senate report was trying to add to the pressure to actually get something done. However, it was released, inevitably, after the military effort to push Iraq’s armed forces out of Kuwait was underway, and anyway, the Greenhouse issue was booooring by then.
What I think we can learn from this is that detailed reports take time, and by then something else has come along and distracted everyone. I don’t know what to do about this, beyond having really resilient social movement organisations that understand the dynamics of issue-attention cycles.
What happened next: The issue went away, and then got reduced to “ratify Kyoto or not”? It finally returned in 2006, twenty long long years ago. Meanwhile, the emissions kept climbing and the concentrations kept climbing. Fafocene.
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.
Every issue of the CO2 Newsletter had an editorial. They are William Barbat’s attempt to share (and shape) situational awareness.
Here, in March 1980, he is breathing a sigh of relief because it seems the various elements of the state (the Department of Energy, the Council on Environmental Quality) is finally beginning to get its act together. Sadly, all that would be wrecked from November 1980, with the coming of the Reagan gang. (And yet, Barbat persisted. The man had brains and guts).
The new decade begins on an optimistic note as the CO2-greenhouse problem is beginning to receive deserved attention in scientific, political, and economic institutions. Also this particular environmental issue may unite former adversaries in a common effort. David Burns, head of the AAAS Climate Program, has noted a great increase in the number of major papers which are being prepared for publication on the CO2 problem. Also our growing readership indicates to us that the Newsletter is fulfilling its role of enlightenment. Soon a European distributorship for the Newsletter may be established. Most heartening though is the apparent absence of polarization toward the CO2 problem.
Still much skepticism remains concerning the seriousness and urgency of the CO2 problem. Although a rapidly growing number of scientists feel that we now have sufficient knowledge of impending CO2– induced impacts on which to base energy policies, others feel that much more concrete evidence must first be gained throughout the world to substantiate theories and models. Some non-technical people grossly misinterpret this skepticism as representing negative proof.
From the very beginning, much work on the CO2 problem has been performed under adverse conditions or severe financial restraints. Tyndall had to trouble-shoot his galvanometers and have them reconstructed in order to measure the absorption and radiation of heat by CO2. He found that the green dye used in the silk covering of the copper coils of the most delicate instruments of his day contained some iron compound which caused the needle to deviate. Arrhenius lacked laboratory determinations of the absorption coefficients for CO2 and water vapor at plus 15 degrees C, and he also lacked the laboratory equipment needed to make the determinations. “Such experiments . . . would require very expensive apparatus beyond that at my disposal.” Ingeniously, Arrhenius used the earth’s atmosphere instead as his laboratory. Ernest Rutherford described the challenges of those days clearly’ “We haven’t the money, so we’ve got to think.”
Modern workers on the CO2 problem seem to be little better off. The federal funding of Keeling‘s invaluable monitoring of atmospheric CO2 concentrations fell victim to the race to put a man on the moon for several months in 1963. The General Circulation Model of Manabe and Wetherald reportedly contained a programming error, which apparently could only be eliminated by a computer rerun which exceeded their resources. Glaciologists are asked to make predictions of future ice sheet behavior from very sparse data. As far as we can tell, the only available forecast of the warming threshold for West Antarctica Ice Sheet destruction relies solely on a temperature datum provided by a map made from Russian observations taken during the International Geophysical Year. Polar research has been funded meagerly by the U.S. in recent years.
Meetings which bring together atmospheric scientists, climate modelers, terrestrial and marine biologists, ocean geochemists, and other workers to analyze the CO2 problem collectively are greatly limited as to frequency and numbers of invited participants. Publications concerning such meetings are usually incomplete and much delayed. Some important results of the scientific analyses are not even available for purchase through normal channels because some agencies seem to act more as a sink than a source of information. Thus, we owe a great debt of gratitude to the relatively small number of scientists who have brought us so much understanding with so little.
FRED Prata was flicking through some satellite pictures one day when he saw a “funny looking cloud”. It got him thinking. A few years later, that train of thought produced a piece of technology worth tens of millions of dollars — possibly hundreds of millions — every year to the international airline industry.
Chandler, J. 2006. Discarded scientists fail to grasp CSIRO logic. The Age, 11 February.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that since the permanent invasion in 1788 Australia has always been a set of settler colonies keen to exploit natural resources for short term gain. Great god development and all that… this required knowledge, science (production and, inevitably, impact science). The CSIRO was born.
The specific context was that CSIRO scientists had been at the forefront of investigating climate change impacts, from the early 1970s onwards. By the 2000s, they were under the cosh.
What I think we can learn from this is that the distinction between production science and impact science is crucial, and under-understood. And that our lords and masters are basically morons who kill the goose that lays golden eggs.
What happened next: The attacks on scientists producing inconvenient truths have continued, regardless of the party in charge. Because the parties are there to keep the “show” (or relentless extraction and accumulation) on the road.
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.
