Hi, I'm Drew. Welcome to my low-sodium, organic, fair trade website! I am an assistant professor of environmental studies at Oberlin; also, I am not to my knowledge a victim of a mummy's curse. Navigate as follows:
- If you are interested in my SCIENTIFIC WORK: I use 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. 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
Fun science talk: Titan, moon of Saturn (Oberlin)
Date: 1 October 2026 at 6pm ET
Location: Cat in the Cream Coffeehouse
I will be talking about the bizarre atmosphere of Titan, moon of Saturn, in a (hopefully) fun popular science talk. Come learn about a moon where it rains natural gas and you could fly if you made like Icarus and flapped your wings!
Lecture: Reducetarian Summit (Raleigh)
Date: 25 October 2026 at 3pm ET
Location: Raleigh Marriott City Center
I will be presenting on trends in ammonia emissions from agriculture at the 2026 Reducetarian Summit in Raleigh, NC. More info here.
Book talk: Half-Earth Socialism (Akron)
Date: 28 October 2026 at 5:30pm ET
Location: Akron-Summit County Public Library Main Branch (60 S High St, Akron, OH 44326)
I will be discussing my book Half-Earth Socialism in an event hosted by Akron DSA.
Additional events, future and past, are available on my events page.
You can learn more about my research on the projects page, or you can read through all of my 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.
Read more of my writing here, or see all featured interdisciplinary projects on my projects page.
A random media appearance
Current Affairs Podcast with Nathan J. Robinson (podcast)
7 July 2022 | Listen here
My co-author Troy Vettese and I spoke with Nathan from the Current Affairs podcast 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.
