Hi, I'm Drew. Welcome to my low-sodium, organic, gluten-free website! I am an assistant professor of environmental studies at Oberlin, where (1) I lead a lab that uses satellite data to track pollution back to its source, and (2) I think about connections between technical knowledge, social movements, and democracy. Also, I hold no world records. Navigate as follows:
- If you are interested in my SCIENTIFIC WORK: My lab uses satellite data to track pollution back to its source, monitor emissions, and diagnose the drivers of pollution change. For the details, check out out my ongoing projects, research papers, conference presentations, open-source software, and datasets. My lab website includes information on current group members and employment opportunities. For general-audience explanations of some key findings, you can read my newsletter.
- If you are interested in my INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK: I think about economic democracy within planetary boundaries, with an emphasis on connecting science with social movements. This work has taken the form of books, public writing, academic publications, and video games. My current book project for Verso, co-authored with historian Troy Vettese, connects direct democratic institutions like climate assemblies with the multi-species collaborations of rewilding: both require letting go of the fantasy of control.
- 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. On it, you can find ephemera I have made over the years, including essays and reporting and original music. For the full experience of this randomly-generated website, reload a bunch of times.
- If you are interested in CONTACT: I can be reached at drew [at] drewpendergrass [dot] com, at the academic address in my CV, and on my only active socials: Bluesky and LinkedIn. Upcoming events are on my events page, and you can keep up with my work by subscribing to my (infrequent) newsletter below:
Upcoming events
Conference: American Meteorological Society talk on ammonia emission trends (Denver)
Date: 11 January 2027 at 1:45pm MT
Location: Room 103, Colorado Convention Center (Session 3A Agriculture-Atmosphere Interactions I)
I will be presenting some of my work on global ammonia emissions trends and their drivers at the 2027 AMS meeting in Denver. View the abstract in the Online Program here.
Additional events, future and past, are available on my events page.
You can learn more about my research on my lab website, or you can read through all of my scientific papers and presentations on their respective pages.
A featured interdisciplinary project!
A paper on the politics of Earth System models
Abstract. This paper explores the political uses of images generated by Earth System science. It argues that images of possible climate futures, maps of potential worlds of heatwaves and wildfires, are made legible to policymakers by an alliance with a class of climate-economy models that associate scientific estimates of climate impacts with a prescribed international policy and technology mix. While environmental models have successfully mobilized policymakers in the past by providing images of “planetary scenarios” accompanying different emissions pathways, with climate change a political actor outside the administrative state is required to overcome the entrenchment of fossil capital. The paper suggests such actors are empowered not by the rhetoric of scenario modeling but by the emerging practice of “planetary sensing,” where activists and stakeholders directly mobilize the planetary images generated by Earth System science as they work to evacuate prisons, track pollutants, and repair pipelines.
Pendergrass, D. C. (2024). "From planetary scenarios to planetary sensing: Models, observations, and political legibility." The Anthropocene Review. 20530196241270716. doi:10.1177/20530196241270716 | Read it here | Get the PDF.
Read more of my writing here, or see all featured interdisciplinary projects on my projects page.
A random media appearance
A World to Win with Grace Blakeley (podcast)
15 June 2022 | Listen here
My co-author Troy Vettese and I spoke with Grace Blakeley on the World to Win podcast, from Tribune Magazine, about our book Half-Earth Socialism.
Additional interviews and media are available on my interviews page.
All the cool kids are using CHEEREIO!
CHEEREIO is a tool that uses observations of pollutants in the atmosphere, measured from satellites or surface stations, to correct supercomputer models that simulate the Earth. Powerful use cases for CHEEREIO include tracking pollution back to its source, even if there are no local observations on the ground, and monitoring greenhouse gas emissions in near-real-time. Read more on my projects page or the offical CHEEREIO site.
