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The Black Tide That Made America Green (almost)
There wasn’t much to be optimistic about in January 1969. The Vietnam War was still raging, consuming everything: lives, money, political capital, and whatever remained of the public’s faith in Washington. Peace talks had begun in Paris the previous year, but little moved beyond procedural theatre. By the time Lyndon Johnson handed the presidency to… Read more
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What happened in Colombia this week?
When frustration reached its breaking point and cleared the ground for a different kind of post-COP climate diplomacy. The COP process has long been held hostage by petrostate vetoes. Could this week in Colombia be the moment when climate politics begins to move in a different direction? I have expressed my frustration about COPs so… Read more
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The Erosion of Press Freedom in Europe’s South
Europe’s southern edge reveals how fragile media independence can be Something different today, but perhaps not really. The state of the press has long served as a measure of democracy itself, shaping not only what we know but also what we are able to question. This is why the findings from Reporters Without Borders deserve… Read more
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When Language Turns Against Us
Matt Wixey’s Basilisk and the Weaponisation of Language I will start by saying that Basilisk is a strange book, and that strangeness is exactly what makes it so compelling. Matt Wixey constructed Basilisk as an academic reconstruction of an unedited document, received online. Its narrative is buried within fragments such as data dumps, email chains, and bibliographies,… Read more
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Welcome to the Resistance, Pope Leo
“The world is ravaged by a handful of tyrants.” Those forceful words didn’t come from a dissident, a historian, or an activist on the margins but from a sitting Pope, in Cameroon on a Thursday after the president of the United States had attacked him on social media. So here we are. The U.S.-Pope front is… Read more
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Dust Bowl: When the Sky Turned Black
How ambition, drought, and bad decisions buried the Great Plains in dust Last week, I wrote about the drought in the United States and suggested it could evolve into something reminiscent of the Dust Bowl years. A few readers asked what those years were. So, here’s the story of how an ordinary stretch of farmland became the… Read more
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About Me
I write about geopolitics and the history of climate change. Sometimes, I just chat about books or whatever else grabs my attention.
