Non-fiction

The Los Angeles Review of Books

“Breaking the Frame: The Narratives that Help us Fight Climate Change.” The Los Angeles Review of Books, non-fiction essay. Paying attention to communication is particularly important in the case of climate change, because how you tell a story decides how you’ll solve it. July 2019.

“Mining the Hurricane.” The Los Angeles Review of Books, Oct 3 2018. Review of The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists, by Naomi Klein.

Dissent Magazine

“Unnatural Disaster: After the Chennai Floods.” Dissent Magazine, non-fiction article. Last December’s floods in Chennai illustrated the devastating consequences of a development model that puts profits before people. But they also hinted at what a democratic response to climate disaster might look like. April 2016.

The Wire

“A Warming Earth Could Mean Monsoons Could Change Course, and India Must Prepare.” The Wire, 23 Sep 2015. For millennia, lives across South Asia have beat to the monsoon’s largely predictable rhythm. What happens when that rhythm shifts?

Articles for The Wire from the Paris Climate Talks (COP21) in December 2015.

“COP21 Diary: A Ray of Sunshine, a Song of Despair.” The Wire, 1 Dec 2015. Sunday night in Paris, images of green trees and messages of hope were projected onto the Eiffel Tower, but there were few on the streets to see it.

“COP21 Diary: The United Nations, their Porous Borders and the People in Between.” The Wire, 2 Dec 2015. Outside of the COP21 site at Le Bourget, north of Paris, France, there is a forest of flags from across the world.

“COP21 Diary: From the Pacific to Chennai, Those Degrees Show Us What They’re Capable Of.” The Wire, 3 Dec 2015. At the ongoing world climate change conference on Wednesday, Marshall Islands poet Kathy Jetnil Kijiner spoke before an audience at COP21 about the ocean threat to her home.

“COP21 Diary: As Talks Go On Behind Closed Doors, Scientists and Activists Fret Outside.” The Wire, 4 Dec 2015. Climate scientist and activist James Hansen was once reluctant to tell his grandchildren about climate change.

“COP21 Diary: With Conference at Midpoint, India Hard Sells Its Carbon Budget Idea.” The Wire, 5 Dec 2015. Saturday, December 5 is the rough halfway point of COP21, and an important deadline: by noon this day the first draft of the Paris climate agreement needs to be finalised by negotiators.

“COP21 Diary: The Thrill and the Challenge of Collective Action.” The Wire, 7 Dec 2015. I am lying on the ground with my face turned to the Eiffel Tower, which rises perhaps half a kilometre away into an improbably beautiful sky. I have to be careful about shifting my feet and my head so I don’t hit the individuals at either end: together, we form the top half of the letter B in the phrase “100% Renewable.”

“COP21 Diary: From Chasing Ice to Helping Climate Migrants.” The Wire, 9 Dec 2015. When chunks of glaciers break off, or “calve,” they don’t slip smoothly off to sea.

“COP21 Diary: The Words of the Language That Makes Climate Action Affirmative and Equitable.” The Wire, 9 Dec 2015. Prior to coming to COP21, a climate scientist warned me that climate change negotiations by themselves can be as interesting as watching paint dry.

“COP21 Diary: Climate Science is Ahead of Policy But, Thankfully, the Fear is Behind.” The Wire, 10 Dec 2015. All the way across Northern Eurasia and the Northern reaches of the Americas, groves of trees have started to take on an odd appearance.

“COP21: Camps Agree on ‘Well Below 2ºC’ But Claw At Everything Else.” The Wire, 11 Dec 2015. On Thursday afternoon at COP21, a gigantic sphere covered with a projection of the Earth drew wondering crowds in the United States pavilion.

“Le Bourget Forgoes Sleep as Draft Negotiations Continue Into Wee Hours of COP21.” The Wire, 12 Dec 2015. Even at this very late stage, debates still rage in closed-off negotiating rooms while a very sleep deprived civil society tries to make its voice heard.

“Whatever Happens Next, This is What COP21 Lets Us Do Against Climate Change.” The Wire, 17 Dec 2015. The Paris Agreement has been signed, as of Saturday December 12, and Le Bourget is closing up shop.

IndiaBioScience

“As climates change, montane habitats may radically shift.” IndiaBioScience, Oct 10 2015. Across the world, regions at high elevations have been warming at an accelerated pace—with average temperatures in the Himalayas having risen more than twice the global average of 0.7oC in the last century. What does this mean for the future of Himalayan forests, grasslands and glaciers?

“The diminishing songbird islands of the Western Ghats.” IndiaBioScience, Jul 24 2015. Songbirds in the Western Ghats driven to high altitude “sky island” refuges by ancient climate upheavals now face further genetic isolation, as human action continues to partition the habitats of birds with nowhere else to go.

“Afforestation will help the planet—but climate change needs a deeper solution.” IndiaBioScience, Dec 2 2014. In the past decade scientists and conservationists have argued back and forth about the net effects forests have on global climate. G. Bala from the Indian Institute of Science suggests that while planting trees in the tropics could help ameliorate climate change, it is more important to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

Preparing for Climate Negotiations in Paris.”IndiaBioScience, Apr 21 2015. Public talk by Jean-Marc Séré-Charlet, Minister Counsellor at the French Embassy in India.

 

Fiction

 

“The Storyteller.” Dreamer’s Magazine, short fiction. Winner of Pen Parentis Fellowship for 2019-2020. Two children wander a deserted beach, in a world transformed by a storm. August 2019.