I spend a lot of time thinking deeply about climate change—not just how to slow it, but how it will change how we live. I don’t think there is a greater way that warming stands to change the world we live in than by leading to dramatic shifts in where populations gravitate. That will then determine peace or conflict, wealth or poverty, even basic sustenance. And so, with many possible priorities to choose from, I just felt like this was the most important, and largest, human story that had to be told. And at its heart, it's really about individual people full of hope and need and trying to find something better for themselves, which we can all relate to.

I try not to use technical language at all! Sometimes it slips in. But the art or the goal is always to figure out how to put complex things in terms everyone can not only relate to, but stay engaged with. It’s the only way that anyone will actually read what you write. As for the narrative, the ideal (not easy to achieve) is a narrative that explains what needs to be explained without switching back out of it. But otherwise its a rhythm. You can write what feels right and switch gears to cover more difficult or science-y material when the story itself seems ready to shift. If the human narrative carries more momentum and is easier to read—often the case—then you can use it to paddle your story along, and then coast through a little explanatory, then paddle again.

That’s almost too big a question to answer. I’ve always focused on investigative reporting with clear wrongdoing and accountability. That’s easier when talking about pollution or the destruction of the environment, than with climate change. Climate change is sprawling, intensely depressing, and until very recently has also been mostly focused on the future. Its been difficult to do classic investigative work about the future. I’ve gone through stages of evolution as I’ve switched gears, and also as climate change has become more mainstream in the news media.

Most recently I’ve responded to the enormity and overwhelming nature of it by gravitating towards very big projects, more conceptual and what my editors like to call “intellectual scoops,” where I try to pay attention to the things that no one else is covering and connect the dots across issues in very complex ways. That gets overwhelming in itself though, and so I’m on the lookout for the classic climate crime investigation now all over again.