Posts tagged ‘Environmentalism’
Frack Off! A Puppet Play
Frack Off! A Puppet Play, with Michael D. Dinwiddie, (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2025).
Frack Off! unfolds amid one of the most volatile moments in recent American politics, the 2016 Trump campaign, when disbelief, exhilaration, outrage, and amusement collided. As the MAGA movement surged and public debate turned electric, the nation seemed to teeter between spectacle and seriousness.
Instead of adding to the digital noise, Peder Anker and Michael D. Dinwiddie turn back to an older medium: European puppet theatre. Here, the devil scheme, dogs speak blunt truths, and stereotypes shrink to wooden likenesses we can finally see clearly enough to laugh at. Blending satire, tradition, and contemporary anxiety, Frack Off! offers a puppet play for our troubled, uncertain times.
Get the play here
For the Love of Bombs
For the Love of Bombs: The Trail of Nuclear Suffering (London: Anthem Press, 2025).
Abstract
The truism that history is written by its winners reflects the literature about how the bomb came about, with apologetic books most often written by U.S. scholars. The physicist Robert Oppenheimer, the nuke’s ‘father’, is repeatedly centre stage, as in the case of the recent film about him. These are elitist stories that more often than not ignore the suffering and violence of the bomb to laypeople in general, and to marginalised groups in particular. Starting with the gruesome mining of uranium by First Nation people in northern Canada, and continuing with the racialist culture of uranium enrichment in the Atomic City of Oak Ridge, Peder Anker offers alternative perspectives. It’s a story of how the bikini swimwear came to fetishise the nuclear bombardment of the Bikini Atoll with its celebration of ‘sex bombs’ and (an)atomic ‘bombshells’. Our current global warming fears also hearken back to ordinary citizens wondering if atomic bombs would blow up the entire sky. If some of this was news to you, it might have to do with how the story of nuclear bombs has been told.
Review
“Bomben er ingen metafor,” Ny tid, April 20, 2025. [PDF]
Blog and op-eds
“Leslie R. Groves Invented the Atomic Bomb,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, July 21, 2025.
“Farewell Oppenheimer” Anthem, Jan. 29. 2025.
“The stories ‘Oppenheimer’ didn’t tell” Washington Post, March 15, 2024. [PDF]
“Årets verste film” Klassekampen, March 13, 2024. [PDF]
Podcast
New Books Network, with Miranda Melcher, March 30, 2025.
In the news
Janae Antrum, “Understanding the narrative 80 Years Later: African Americans and the A-bomb,” New York Amsterdam News, July 24, 2025.
Jade McClain, “Gallatin Professor Wants the Oppenheimer Narrative Up in Smoke,” NYU News, April 17., 2025.
Get the book
US $ | Eur € | Brit £ | Can $ | Barnes & Noble | Anthem Press
Transitioning to Sustainable Cities
The unmatched influence that human societies are wielding on the natural world is a given based on changes in climate and the environment, also called the epoch of the Anthropocene. Do we need to investigate how that dominance changes the life of plants and animals in urban areas?
“Interview with Mitchell Joachim, Peder Anker and Nicholas Gervasi” in Transitioning to Sustainable Cities and Communities, Hubert Klumptner (et.al, eds.), (Basel: MDPI Books, 2024), p. 137-148. [PDF]
Op-eds on the Oppenheimer film
“The stories ‘Oppenheimer’ didn’t tell” Washington Post, March 15, 2024. [PDF]
“Årets verste film” Klassekampen, March 13, 2024. [PDF]
My review of Green Development or Greenwashing?
Pál and Räsänen and Saikku, Green Development or Greenwashing? Environmental Histories of Finland, H-Environment, Dec. 2023. [PDF].
My review of Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity
Marion Grau, Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity: Reconstructing Sacred Geographies in Norway, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, June 2023, 326-327. [PDF]
My review of A New Ecological Order
Ştefan Dorondel and Stelu Şerban (eds.), A New Ecological Order. Development and the transformation of nature in Eastern Europe, Centaurus 65:1 (2023), 201-202. [PDF]
Livet er best ute
Livet er best ute: Friluftslivets historie og filosofi, (Oslo: Kagge Forlag, 2022)
Livet er best ute. Eller er det egentlig det, spør Peder Anker i denne boken om friluftslivets historie og filosofi. Med friluftslivet som et utgangspunkt forteller Anker om våre uartikulerte verdier og tradisjoner, slik de ser ut fra fjellet, skogen og svaberget. For lengselen etter friluftslivet er det vi har felles, mener han.
Denne boken har han skrevet for alle de som synes livet er best ute. Leseren trenger ikke noen andre egenskaper for å bli med på å utforske hva friluftslivet er for noe. Anker tar leseren med på en personlig vandring igjennom friluftslivets historie, kultur og filosofi. Det er en tur i et mykt lettgått terreng, med en og annen utfordrende skrent. For det må til for å nå fjellets topp. Der får leseren hvile sine tanker ved varme kilder. Selv om turen er rimelig enkel, så er den på ingen måte ufarlig. Det er mektige motkrefter som undergraver friluftslivet, påpeker Anker, både i oss selv og i samfunnet rundt oss. Friluftslivet er truet. Denne boken søker derfor å fornye og utfordre, med vekt på naturvern.
Kjøp boken i din lokale bokhandel, på Norli, Akademika, Ark bokhandel, eller rett fra Kagge Forlag.
Bla i boka
Les de første 30 sidene gratis her.
Omtale
Runar Larsen, “Jul med din leseglede,” VG: Magainset Reiselyst, 9 desember, 2022.
Emil L. Mohr, “Tilbake til naturen,” Dagens Næringsliv, 22 oktober 2022. [PDF side 1-2, PDF side 3]
Vemund Sveen Finstad, “Et spørsmål om vern”, Aftenposten: Historie, 8 sept. 2022.
Maria Birkeland Olerud, “Drømmen om Kristi gjenoppstandelse ble hetende bærekraftig utvikling,” Vårt land, 28 juli, 2022. [PDF]
Anmeldelser
Marte Ostmoe, “Hva er egentlig et friluftsliv?” Padling, 4 november 2023. [PDF]
Anders Horntvedt, “Selfies, fjellyoga og profittjagende hyener,” Finansavisen, 3 februar, 2023. [PDF]
Rolf Kjøde, “Friluftsromantikk mot fritidskapitalisme,” For Bibel og Bekjennelse, 6 september, 2022.
Tom Hetland, “Norsk friluftsglede sett frå New York,” Stavanger Aftenblad, 21 august, 2022. [PDF]
Espen Søbye, “Er nå livet egentlig best ute?” Morgenbladet, 5 august, 2022. [PDF]
Podkast
“Friluftslivets historie” Historier som endred Norge, 3 april, 2023, med Christian Gilsvik.
“Den norske miljødebatten” Historier som endred Norge, 20 mars, 2023, med Christian Gilsvik.
“Livet er best ute” Ideer, Tankesmien Agenda, 17 februar, 2023, med Hilde Nagel.
“Friluftslivets filosofi og motstraums reiselyst” Litteraturhuset i Bergen, 23 august, 2022, med Gunnar Garfors og moderert av Margunn Vikingstad.
Utdrag
“Hold kjeft stedet,” Vagabond reiselyst, 10 (2022), 51. [PDF].
“Jeg har revet varder. Mange av dem,” Harvest magazin, 16 juli 2022. [PDF]
Bokbad og presentasjoner
“Norsk friluftsliv vs. Amerikansk outdoor life”, Norsk Folkemuseum, May 2. 2024.
“Landscape Architecture”, International Federation of Landscape Architects, NMBU, Feb. 27. 2024.
Bokbad, Amundsen Sport, New York, Nov. 2 2023
Bokbad, Porsgrunn bibliokte, Porsgrunn, Aug. 29, 2023.
Bokbad, Norsk Sjømannskirke, New York, Dec. 7 2022.
Bokbad, Norsk skogmuseum, Elverum, Nov. 24 2022.
Bokbad, Akademika bokhandel, Bø i Telemark, Nov. 23 2022.
Institutt for friluftsliv, idrett og kroppsøving, Universitetet i sørøst Norge, Bø i Telemark, Nov. 23 2022.
Østfoldmuseene, Halden, Nov. 7. 2022.
Boklansering, Oslo, 17 august, 2022.
TV
“Klimakrisen” TV2 Nyheter, 6, 8 og 9. april, 2023.
NRK Kveldsnytt, 15 august, 2022.
NRK Nyhetsmorgen, 8 august, 2022.
Radio
NRK Hordaland, 23 august, 2022.
NRK P2-Pulsen, 21 juli, 2022.
Greenwashing a Nation
Norwegians like to think of Norway as being an alternative environmentally sound nation compared with the rest of the world. They fashion themselves and their country as a microcosm for a better macrocosm. The reality is that this greenwashing of a nation is powered by the money from the oil, and that my native Norway has little to be proud about.
Greenhouse Book Talk: The Power of the Periphery
Environmental Humanities Book Talk: The Power of the Periphery, The Greenhouse, University of Stavanger, Nov. 2, 2020.
Peder Anker 