One of my favorite pastimes is to wander from bar to bar not drinking but pretending to do so while listening to fellow alcoholics opine on the issues of the day. Sometimes I bring to bear a TV-B
Let’s Blow up Luxury Carbon
This piece first appeared at Carbon Tax Center in the summer of 2021. It’s not often you hear the New York Times opining on the value of industrial sabotage, yet columnist Ezra Klein in the summe
Solitude as the Antidote to Misanthropy
When I return from a solo backpacking trip, all I want is company. I see another person at the trail’s end, at the road that leads back to the cities, I’m a slavering dog – I hump all legs,
Screenlandia and the Mass Man
Every human in my immediate view is hunched over a screen. It is something out of a horror movie. You who have wandered in the backcountry and for even a few days have been free of the digital ty
Letter to an Ecosaboteur
Below is one in a series of letters to an ecosaboteur, declared by our government an “ecoterrorist,” who is serving 96 months in federal prison. In his most recent email, this individual, w
Latest Loathsome Antics of the Nature Conservancy, or, Why you can’t trust corporate prostitutes to be environmentalists
More than 150 conservation, environmental, and social justice organizations have accused The Nature Conservancy of “promoting false climate solutions.” A logging truck enters a wood-pel
“Logging-for-wildlife” — the new trick in the timber industry’s playbook
(Originally published at National Geographic under the title, “Is Clearcutting U.S. Forests Good for Wildlife?“) Coming upon a clear-cut in an old forest is a jolting experience. Trees
The Business of Scenery (Harper’s Magazine, April 2021)
Amusement Parks — Harper’s Magazine, April 2021 (pdf)
Cities and Green Orthodoxy: The Future of Sustainable Development
September 27, 2020 Cities and Green Orthodoxy The Future of Sustainable Development by Christopher Ketcham Photograph Source: Boqiang Liao – CC BY 2.0 As the world has urbanized rapidly since 195
Wreckreation, Public Lands, and the Fecal Timebomb
“On the trails of the public lands of the Catskills there is more trash too, more than I have ever seen in three decades of hiking and camping in these woods. Also more feces. People ar