PinnedNothing to be afraid of: an introductionAbout a dozen years ago, I became friends with a couple who lived in central Washington’s Methow Valley — a wide open landscape nestled against the Northeast Cascades, a place of mountains and forests and rivers and high desert grasslands. I visited them, and fell in love with the Valley…Climate Change17 min readClimate Change17 min read
Jan 1draft, 12/31/22We’re made of light, you and I every cell of our bodies built by its transmutation into the soft, the corporeal, into cornflowers blowing in a meadow a deer or a child running through that meadow, or diving into a dark, cool pond. You lay on the beach in the…Grief2 min readGrief2 min read
Nov 13, 2022An ounce of prevention…In the midst of organizing my thoughts about a series of essays that explores how we’ll need to transform in order to survive the coming decades in a humane way, I read this weekend’s New York Times essay about rebuilding and community. It’s hopeful to me that even though the…Climate Change6 min readClimate Change6 min read
Oct 13, 2020What We Can SeeI began this essay in a Pacific Northwest on fire. The sky was a heavy yellow-gray, and it was easy to look directly at the orange sun, which seemed drained of heat and even light. I was far from any fire danger, but for days the smoke made the outside…10 min read10 min read
Nov 29, 2019What if You’re Necessary?Here’s what passes for humor in the climate movement sometimes: emailing one of my colleagues a few months ago, in the midst of some strategic questions about a new campaign, I said oh, well, if we get it wrong it’s not like it’s the end of the…. Oh. It’s not…Climate Change17 min readClimate Change17 min read
Oct 17, 2019To Hell with False BalanceTo Hell with (False) Balance For a long time now I’ve tried to parse my deep antipathy to the terms “self-care” and “work-life balance”, most especially as they relate to climate activism and other justice work; it was a relief when the ever-incisive Naomi Klein told an interviewer this week…Climate Change7 min readClimate Change7 min read
May 10, 2019A living compassWhen I was asked to give this sermon, I was supposed to elaborate on a blog piece I wrote called “How to Keep Going”. …Climate Change11 min readClimate Change11 min read
May 10, 2019Loving a vanishing worldI want to talk about power — how much we have, and how we can use it meaningfully. But I’m going to start with despair. At a beach in British Columbia’s Gulf Islands recently — on my first real vacation in almost three years — I felt much of the…Climate Change19 min readClimate Change19 min read
Dec 2, 2018How to keep goingAt the MIT Media Lab’s Disobedience Award ceremony on Friday, someone asked me how I keep going—where I find hope. As a climate organizer, it’s a question I get all the time, but it struck me a little differently this time. What she said was something to the effect of…Climate Change5 min readClimate Change5 min read
Oct 28, 2018The Climate Trial that Wasn’t(and the hope that is) Two years ago, four friends and I stopped the flow of tar sands bitumen from Canada into the United States by instigating the shutdown of five pipelines in Washington State, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota. …Climate Change10 min readClimate Change10 min read
