Dear reader: while this website will serve from here on out as an archive of my journalism over the years, and to share a statement of purpose for new people curious about my writing, I’ve mo
Author: cketcham
Why Americans Appear to Love the UnitedHealthcare Assassin
On X, he was dubbed the Claims Adjuster, or simply the Adjuster. The memes suggested a Punisher-style comic-book hero, hooded and masked, in a black jacket, with a silenced pistol. The narrative wa
Eat, Pray, Pollute: On The Needed Death of Tourism
A crowd of 3,000 anti-tourism protesters descended on posh downtown Barcelona last July, their demeanor one of delighted malice. They cordoned off hotels and eateries with hazard tape, as if demarc
Man is not the center of all things — not even on his/her/its birthday
In a recent conversation about the celebration of birthdays, a fellow journalist extolled the idea that we should coddle ourselves in the notion of our individual importance because, as she put it,
“Billions of Lives on The Line: Existential Crisis Realities” — a guest essay from Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion
Editor’s note: Hallam and I have been corresponding for years. I find his intransigence bracing, his calls for a citizen uprising against ecocidal elites simple commonsense. His cri-de-co
My Series at Truthdig on the False Greening of Economic and Population Growth
In my ongoing series at Truthdig.com, I ask whether the promise of a painless and ecologically sound transition to a post-carbon future — so-called “green growth” — is a fee
The Forest Nearest Me
I am blessed that out my back door is a forest of healthy tall unlogged hemlocks, whose evergreen loveliness keeps me from going mad in the long winters of the Catskills. It is a particular tor
The Music of the Waters
After a long winter drought here in the Catskills, it is springtime and the water has come, a week of heavy rain. The forest is thankful with upstretched arms, the leaves erect, the ferns sitting
Hyper-visitation, the Fate of the National Parks, and the Tourism Takeover of a Small Town
The trouble at Arches National Park starts at the entrance during the spring and summer, when visitation is at its highest. First, there’s a 40-minute queue of idling traffic to reach the fee b
Addressing Climate Change Will Not ‘Save the Planet’
The dismal reality is that green energy will save not the complex web of life on Earth but the particular way of life of one domineering species. CONSERVATION BIOLOGY FINDS itself in a terrifying