Welcome to James' Eccentric Orbits

Greetings. Why did I write this Substack, and why should you subscribe to it? Since 2013 I’ve been writing opinion and journalism articles about climate, sustainability, energy, Earth science, ecosystems, complex systems, and much else.

I love writing articles. I hate pitching article ideas. When I have an idea I want to start bashing keys. To get an editor to commission an article you have to convince them that what you want to write will be interesting, and a good fit for their readership. I completely understand that. It’s completely reasonable.

The net result is that I sometimes spend time thinking about something that I think other people will be interested in, but never get to write about it because I can’t convince an editor to take it. I could spend more time and effort learning how to better pitch articles. Or I could just write them and publish them here.

But this Substack is going to be more than an odd bin of articles that never managed to cross the border into media land. This also gives me the opportunity to say more about the things that do end up being published. The bits of the story that never made the final edit. The details, tangents and other elements that adds more depth and context.

Finally, with this Substack I can comment and respond to the stories being written by other people.

Everything here will be published with a Creative Commons license. So you are more than welcome, in fact positively encouraged, to republish – but please attribute the work to me and don’t fiddle around with it.

Published with Creative Commons CC BY-ND.