Home | Drew Pendergrass

Hi, I'm Drew. Welcome to my fair trade, organic, low-sodium website! I am a postdoctoral associate at the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment and an incoming assistant professor of environmental studies and sciences at Oberlin College; also, I appreciate knowledge of the outcome of a given situation. Be aware that this website is very large, and some of it is randomly generated. For the full experience, reload a bunch of times and navigate as follows:

If you are interested in my SCIENTIFIC WORK: In my scientific research, I use satellite data to track pollution back to its source and monitor emissions in real time, and I maintain free open-source software that allows others to do the same. If you want to learn more, check out out my ongoing projects, research papers, conference presentations, and environmental datasets. Everything is open access, and you can find a general-audience explanation of each of the publications I led in my newsletter.
If you are interested in my INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK: My interdisciplinary work imagines how humanity can democratically govern itself in an age of environmental crisis. With collaborators, I imagine the sorts of institutions and protocols that advance economic democracy within planetary boundaries, with an emphasis on connecting science with (1) social movements and (2) economic planning. This work has taken the form of books, video games, public writing, and academic publications.
If you are interested in MY CV: you can download it here.
If you are interested in MISCELLANEOUS: This website is big because I have had it since high school and I don't delete things. If you search for it, you can find ephemera I have made over the years, including original music.
If you are interested in HUMAN CONTACT: I can be reached at drew [at] drewpendergrass [dot] com or at the academic address in my CV. For upcoming events, check out my events page. You can follow me on Bluesky or LinkedIn. The best way to follow my work is to subscribe to my newsletter below (expect emails every six months or so at most):

Upcoming events

Talk: Socialismo di Metà-Terra book tour (Turin, Italy)

Date: 25 March 2026 at 4pm CET

Location: Campus Luigi Einaudi | Univerisità di Torino

I will discuss the Italian translation of my book with Dario Padovan in Turin.

Talk: Socialismo di Metà-Terra book tour (Pettorano sul Gizio, Italy)

Date: 27 March 2026 at 6pm CET

Location: Castello Cantelmo

I will discuss the Italian translation of my book with Rewilding Apennines in the Castello Cantelmo in Abruzzo.

Talk: Socialismo di Metà-Terra book tour (Milan, Italy)

Date: 28 March 2026 at 3pm CET

Location: Piano Terra

I will discuss the Italian translation of my book with Andrea Fumagalli, Gianluca Pozzoni, and Elisabetta Corrà at Piano Terra in Milan.

Additional events, future and past, are available on my events page.

FEATURED SCIENCE

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July 2020 daily assimilated methane at surface level (Pendergrass et al., 2025).

You can learn more about my research on the projects page, or you can read through all of our scientific papers and presentations on their respective pages.

A featured interdisciplinary project!

A paper on the town-country divide in architecture and in Marxism

In this article, I worked with historian Troy Vettese and architect Filip Mesko to discuss how eco-socialist planning can create a just and sustainable society. We argue that the problem of land scarcity, long a topic of both classical political economy and architecture, is an opportunity to erode the separation of city and country. We consider the intellectual history of the town-country divide and how the category of wilderness and the practice of rewilding can break this binary. The illustration is by Lukas Eigler-Harding and Ariel Noltimier-Strauss and is entitled Half-Earth Diptych (2021).

Vettese, T.G.W, Pendergrass, D. C., and Mesko, F. (2022). "Town, Country, and Wilderness: Designing the Half-Earth." Architectural Design. 92(1), 112–119. doi:10.1002/ad.2780 | Read it here.

Lukas Eigler-Harding and Ariel Noltimier-Strauss, Half-Earth Diptych, 2021. Half-Earth Socialism is a utopian project of planetary proportions. Advances in linear programming and cybernetics create the possibility of consciously controlling the economy through in natura planning. A unified humanity could achieve equality politically and economically, allowing it to democratically decide how to allocate land between settlements that blur the town–country division and gigantic rewilded nature preserves.

A random media appearance

Blueprint from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (radio)

19 February 2021 | Listen here

In this radio interview, my co-author Troy Vettese and I spoke with Blueprint's Jonathan Green about how land use change might help us make sense of recent global fire crises from California to Siberia, Brazil to Australia.

Additional interviews and media are available on my interviews page.

Play Alchemy!

"So fun you won't even need friends!"

Some true statements

I keep the old gods ... I am not to my knowledge a victim of a mummy's curse ... you cannot prove I have sympathies for the former state of Burgundy ... I proudly possess object permanence ... I am not a substitute for a medical doctor ... I am not a closed, non-orientable, boundary-free manifold ... I am reluctant to resort to black magic ... I have never traveled to an exoplanet ... I have never commanded an army composed of more than 100,000 soldiers ... I hold no world records ... I am a mammal ... my mind's eye exists only in a figurative sense ... to my knowledge, there is no portrait of me that ages in my place ... I have never advocated on behalf of, or against, the Free Silver movement ... I have no trouble distinguishing my right from my left ... I accept the axiom of choice ... I have nothing to do with explosions ... I have absolutely no intention of running for Senate in the great state of Minnesota ...