Hi, I'm Drew. Welcome to my organic, gluten-free, GMO-free website! I am an assistant professor of environmental studies at Oberlin; also, to my knowledge, there is no portrait of me that ages in my place. 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, develops an environmental philosophy that connects the ethic of direct democratic institutions like climate assemblies with the multi-species collaborations of rewilding.
- 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
Lecture: Noble seminar in environmental physics (Toronto)
Date: 28 September 2026 at 4pm ET
Location: University of Toronto, McLennan Laboratories
I will be presenting my work on trends and drivers of ammonia and methane emissions as part of the Noble seminar series in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Physics at the University of Toronto.
Lecture: Reducetarian Summit (Raleigh)
Date: 24 October 2026 at TBD
Location: Raleigh Marriott City Center
I will be presenting on trends in ammonia emissions from agriculture at the 2025 Reducetarian Summit in Atlanta, GA. More info here.
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!
Half-Earth Socialism
Half-Earth Socialism is a book I co-authored with environmental historian Troy Vettese on how we can get out of our current ecological mess. Published in April 2022 by Verso Books, you can order it from the publisher here. The book has been translated into Italian, Thai, Korean, Spanish, and Swedish; all translations can be ordered from my books page.
Pendergrass, D.C. and Vettese, T.G.W (2022). Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics. Verso Books. | Read it here.
Read more about my books here, or see all featured interdisciplinary projects on my projects page.
A random media appearance
Majority Report (video)
19 April 2022 | Watch here
My co-author Troy Vettese and I spoke with Emma Vigeland of the Majority Report 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.
