Control Your Concrete

Control Your Concrete: Out Walking | Aug 2026

19 minutes read time

I begin with something dark red hanging from a tree, a berry or small fruit close enough to become almost a planet, then back away into branches heavy with more of them. Soon there is a white knitted thing lodged in the fork of a tree, loops of yarn becoming vines, vines becoming saplings, and then a green walnut with tiny insects walking across its surface as though they have been assigned to inspect it.

This is how the walk goes. Things volunteer themselves.

Flowers, seed heads, deer on a lawn at Baker Park, one antlered young buck ignoring me but his sister looks me in the eye. 

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO A REVOLUTIONARY…

Before there is time to find out, there is a painted utility box and then a hornet’s nest somehow constructed inside the housing of a pedestrian walk signal. This seems worth considering. We construct an apparatus telling ourselves when it is safe to walk across the street and the hornets move in. There may be a lesson here, although I am suspicious of lessons that arrive this conveniently.

A chalk cat appears. Then the side of a truck:

CONTROL YOUR CONCRETE.

There it is.

I had been looking for the title and apparently the title was driving around Ithaca on a truck.

Control your concrete. A perfectly sensible instruction if your business is concrete, but walking around with a camera has ruined my ability to leave perfectly sensible instructions alone. Now it sounds political, psychological, ecological, possibly theological. Control your concrete before your concrete controls you. Keep it inside the forms. Don’t let it spread. Don’t mistake what has hardened for what has to remain.

Meanwhile everything surrounding the concrete refuses the assignment.

A maple leaf lies in grass. A hibiscus opens extravagantly. I move into its red center and come out beneath a bridge where somebody has painted a pink house and the word PERSEVERANCE. Water moves beneath us. Joe-Pye weed catches the sun. Leaf veins turn into streets, streets into leaf veins. Somebody has placed glittering plastic flowers beside the road. Real flowers continue nearby without registering the competition.

This is one of the pleasures of walking: nobody has coordinated anything.

The city has not met with the flowers. The flowers have not approved the utility poles. The deer have not reviewed the zoning. A hornet has not confused a pedestrian signal with a tree; it has simply found a place that works.

And I keep encountering circles.

Berries, walnuts, flowers, seed heads, nests, lily pads, wheels. A dry Queen Anne’s lace head seems to remember the knitted dome in the tree. A living blue damselfly sits on rough concrete and, a few moments later, becomes a giant insect fabricated from welded scraps of metal. I suppose someone else saw the insect too and decided to decided to make one that would last through an endless summer. Then comes the turquoise chalk cat.

Why not?

The film keeps moving between very small things and enormous ones. An insect’s compound eyes, the web wrapped around a burdock burr, the veins of a leaf—and then the whole sky. Water close enough to become moving black shapes, then the lake opening out toward the hills. A mushroom in the grass, then clouds and contrails crossing an enormous blue field.

The small does not explain the large. The large does not make the small insignificant.

On the pavement someone has written:

find joy in the NOW.

And nearby:

Heaven IS CHEERING you on.

I zoom toward JOY. I zoom toward HEAVEN.

I am an atheist walking around Ithaca filming messages from Heaven.

This does not seem to be a problem.

Heaven can cheer me on if it wants to. I will take encouragement wherever I find it, particularly when somebody has written it in chalk. The rain will eventually remove it. There is something appealing about a metaphysical claim with such a short maintenance schedule.

Not far away an egg has broken on the ground. White shell, yellow yolk, dark earth. From there I look upward to a utility pole blazing against the sun, and then downward again to the long pole shadow crossing the asphalt. Heaven, egg, electricity, asphalt. No hierarchy presents itself.

The walk continues.

There are burrs and tiny flowers, paths bending toward the lake, lily pads holding themselves on dark water. Someone has left a brightly colored toy sword beside the sidewalk. Ducks paddle through a shallow stream. A blue plastic cone stands in tall grass. There is goldenrod, burdock, a discarded electrical receptacle, an old red Chevrolet pickup and books set out on a tree stump.

A bumper sticker says: I BRAKE FOR TINY GUYS.

Perhaps that is as close as I get to a manifesto.

I have been susceptible to this stuff for a long time. At fifteen, transcendentalism seemed pretty good after years of bar mitzvah lessons. Now, returning to Thoreau’s Walking, I listen to Laurie Anderson from the album Big Science: “This is the time and this is the record of the time.”

The wasps are part of the record too. One stung me. I reported the nests in the traffic signals to the City, and the next day one was gone.

The living world is mixed up with us and our systems.

The dissolves make that mixture visible. Leaves spread across pavement. Water moves through concrete. A living damselfly becomes an insect made of welded metal. Human geometry begins looking like flower geometry and flower geometry like something we thought we invented.

Toward the end, daylight gives way to night. A toad sits on asphalt. Traffic lights shine on the wet street. Insects gather around artificial light. Railroad tracks disappear into the distance. A bee enters a flower. A huge wet tractor tire fills the frame.

Then water again.

A shoreline. Rain. Gray light. Black. 

When the lights come on, I will tell the audience that I called the film Control Your Concrete, but I am not certain who is controlling what.  Does concrete have a control? A knob?

Concrete cracks. Chalk disappears. Trucks rust. Hornets occupy our signals. Plants push through pavement. Insects investigate our machinery and our lights.

The living world does not stand opposite all this as some pure thing called Nature.

We are inside it too, building roads, houses, machines, gardens, poems and mistakes.

The wild is already here.

Smackdown

Official Story / Public Reckoning / Deeper Contrast

August 2026

Federal / EPA, Agriculture, Interior, Energy, White House

Federal policy describes the period through speed, flexibility, management, development and control. Public participation becomes an administrative burden. Forest protections become restrictions on management. Wild horses become animals to be gathered, adopted, transferred or sold. Record heat becomes a climate measurement and an electricity-demand problem. Water scarcity becomes an operating decision. The enormous appetite for electricity created by AI datacenters becomes another reason to secure abundant and reliable power.

Emphasis

• EPA proposes eliminating minimum federal public-participation requirements for permits covering smaller pollution sources, leaving decisions about whether, when and for how long to provide public comment largely to state and local air agencies. EPA describes the change as reducing administrative burden, speeding permitting, supporting economic development and advancing “energy dominance.”
• The Forest Service proposes rescinding the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which broadly restricts road construction, road reconstruction and timber harvesting in inventoried roadless areas. USDA describes rescission as a way to reduce regulatory burden and return management decisions to individual national forests, giving local officials greater flexibility.
• BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Sale Program transfers immediate private ownership of sale-eligible animals. The agency says the program helps support healthy herds and healthy public lands and states that it is BLM policy not to sell or send wild horses or burros to slaughter.
• The White House declares a national emergency concerning the security of the United States bulk-power system, noting that rapid growth in advanced manufacturing, datacenters and artificial intelligence has increased the nation’s dependence on abundant, reliable electricity.
• NOAA reports that July 2026 was the warmest month on record for the contiguous United States, with an average temperature of 76.9°F, 3.3°F above the 20th-century average. NOAA also reports widespread drought and projects above-normal August wildland fire potential across several regions.
• The Bureau of Reclamation finalizes plans for 2027–2028 Colorado River operations, establishing new operating guidelines for Lake Powell and Lake Mead and reductions in Lower Basin water deliveries while emphasizing operational reliability, flexibility, coordination and protection of critical infrastructure.
• The Department of Energy issues a series of August emergency orders to maintain or increase electricity generation, including orders keeping generating units available in Michigan, Maryland and Pennsylvania to meet anticipated electricity demand and maintain grid reliability.

Key rhetoric

• “Streamline”
• “Administrative burden”
• “Flexibility”
• “Healthy wild horses”
• “Healthy public rangelands”
• “Economic development”
• “Energy dominance”
• “Abundant, reliable electricity”
• “Operational reliability”
• “Critical infrastructure”

Foregrounded

Permitting speed, state and local discretion, electricity supply, grid reliability, critical infrastructure, forest-level decision-making, economic development, land management, water allocation and the administrative problem of managing animals, forests and energy demand.

Minimized or absent

Across the permitting and management documents, less attention is given to cumulative emissions, public participation, ecological fragmentation and what happens after a wild horse becomes private property. The larger connections among wildfire, drought, heat, habitat loss and rising energy demand are largely displaced by the language of administration, allocation, reliability and control.

The Guardian / The New York Times

The reporting follows those administrative words outward into the world they describe. “Streamlining” becomes less public knowledge about pollution. Energy demand becomes new gas infrastructure. Forest management becomes roads, drilling and logging across protected habitat. Wild-horse management follows animals beyond federal paperwork. Water falls to record lows. Fire moves faster than people can evacuate. And by the end of the month, mountains themselves appear to be coming undone.

Emphasis

• Dharna Noor reports that activists are pushing back against Democratic “climate hushing”, arguing that politicians are retreating from climate language even as heat, smoke and flooding become harder to ignore.
• Rebecca Solnit describes summer itself as a casualty of climate breakdown: a season once associated with freedom and pleasure increasingly experienced as heat, smoke, fire and danger.
• A fast-moving British Columbia wildfire puts nearly 22,000 people under evacuation orders, while another 9,700 are warned to prepare to flee. More than 100 fires were burning across the province amid hot, windy weather and prolonged drought.
• Oliver Milman reports that July was the hottest month ever recorded in the contiguous United States, with repeated heat domes and wildfire smoke as scientists attribute the elevated heat to the human-caused climate crisis.
• Lake Mead reaches a record low, threatening water supplies and hydroelectric generation. Later in the month, federal officials announce Colorado River cuts for Arizona, California and Nevada.
• Oliver Milman reports a 76 percent increase in gas-fired projects under construction amid the AI datacenter boom, while Tom Perkins examines the EPA proposal that could reduce mandatory public notice for pollution permits affecting datacenters and other minor sources.
• Maya Yang reports that rescinding the Roadless Rule could expose more than 45 million acres of national forest to roads, drilling and logging, with researchers warning that hundreds of endangered species depend on those lands.
• Dave Philipps follows federally protected wild mustangs through a legal loophole that can end with the animals at slaughter. Once sold by the federal government, horses become private property and lose the protections attached to their previous federal status.
• Karen Zraick reports that the National Academies removed a climate-science chapter from a reference manual for judges after political pressure from Republican officials, including President Trump.
• Near the end of the month, Jonathan Mingle writes that glaciers and permafrost are destabilizing mountain landscapes. Nepal enlarges the frame from an American summer to a planetary one.
• Nesrine Malik argues that the Nepal floods cannot be treated as somebody else’s climate disaster. Richer countries may have greater resources to withstand catastrophe, but climate breakdown operates on one planet; its effects on food, water, migration and political stability do not remain confined by national borders.

Key rhetoric

• Hushing
• Heat
• Fire
• Drought
• Public voice
• Extinction
• Slaughter
• Collapse
• Responsibility

Foregrounded

People evacuating homes, communities breathing smoke, disappearing water, electricity and pollution generated for new infrastructure, animals losing legal protection, forests fragmented by roads, judges losing access to climate science, and disasters whose causes and consequences cross political borders.

Minimized or absent

The assumption that administrative efficiency, local discretion, economic growth or management alone can describe what is happening. The reporting keeps returning to consequences that escape those categories.

Key verbs

Federal verbs: streamline, delegate, permit, manage, gather, remove, sell, rescind, secure, reduce, operate, protect

Guardian / Times verbs: hushing, burns, evacuates, heats, shrinks, cuts, pollutes, fragments, disappears, slaughters, collapses, crosses borders

Sources

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA Proposes to Streamline State and Local Permitting Process for Minor Sources. 1 Jul 2026. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
• Bureau of Land Management. BLM to Begin Utah Wild Horse Gathers to Reduce Overpopulation. 2 Aug 2026. U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
• National Centers for Environmental Information. Assessing the U.S. Temperature and Precipitation in July 2026. 10 Aug 2026. NOAA.
• U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. Special Areas; Roadless Area Conservation. 20 Aug 2026. Federal Register.
• U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Interior Department Finalizes Plans for 2027–2028 Colorado River Operations. 21 Aug 2026. U.S. Department of the Interior.
• The White House. Declaring a National Emergency to Secure the United States Bulk-Power System. 26 Aug 2026. The White House.
• U.S. Department of Energy. 2026 DOE 202(c) Orders. Aug 2026. U.S. Department of Energy.
• Bureau of Land Management. Wild Horse and Burro Sale Program. U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
• Dharna Noor. Democrats’ “climate hushing” prompts activists to turn up the volume. 1 Aug 2026. The Guardian.
• Rebecca Solnit. We launched a war on nature. Now we are in a climate war zone. 4 Aug 2026. The Guardian.
• Associated Press. “Explosive” wildfire forces 22,000 people to flee as British Columbia declares state of emergency. 8 Aug 2026. The Guardian.
• Reis Thebault. Lake Mead, the Nation’s Largest Reservoir, Is Smaller Than Ever. 9 Aug 2026. The New York Times.
• Karen Zraick. Top Science Body Deletes Climate Chapter From Judges’ Manual. 10 Aug 2026. The New York Times.
• Oliver Milman. July was hottest month ever recorded in US as heatwaves scorched country. 10 Aug 2026. The Guardian.
• Dave Philipps. Under Trump, Protected Wild Horses Are Going to Slaughter. 20 Aug 2026. The New York Times.
• Scott Dance. U.S. Announces Colorado River Cuts for 3 States Amid Drought. 21 Aug 2026. The New York Times.
• Oliver Milman. US building twice as much gas-fired capacity as China in AI boom, analysis finds. 25 Aug 2026. The Guardian.
• Tom Perkins. Trump EPA aims to exempt datacenters from disclosing air pollution, advocates warn. 25 Aug 2026. The Guardian.
• Maya Yang. Trump rollback of US forest protections could accelerate extinction of 400 endangered species. 28 Aug 2026. The Guardian.
• Jonathan Mingle. Mountains Are Coming Undone. 29 Aug 2026. The New York Times.
• Nesrine Malik. The Nepal floods seem a world away – but make no mistake, climate breakdown will affect us all. 31 Aug 2026. The Guardian.

The Deeper Contrast

Our political boundaries were not designed for the ecological world we now inhabit.

Wildfire smoke crosses state and national borders. Rivers run through several governments before reaching the sea. Aquifers lie beneath lines drawn on maps. Mountain ranges, forests, watersheds and weather systems form regions that have little regard for the fifty political shapes into which the United States has been divided.

During August I found myself imagining another map: perhaps fifteen large geographical regions organized around watersheds, mountain systems, resources and shared ecological conditions. I wondered whether political representation could somehow be returned to geography as well—one Supreme Court justice rooted in each region, a modern echo of the old circuit-riding court . It is speculative, impractical in its present form and probably full of problems I have not discovered yet.

A new American map suggests a new court: circuit riders. One justice rooted in each region.

A wildfire or flood does not prove the case for fifteen regions or fifteen justices. But these disasters do expose the mismatch between political borders and ecological systems.

The fifty states are powerful political facts. They are not ecological facts. Neither, finally, are nations.

The destruction in Nepal matters here not because Nepal is an American problem but because there is no longer a credible way to divide climate responsibility into somebody else’s weather. Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik argued as August ended that wealth may determine how well a country withstands catastrophe, but climate breakdown belongs to a single planetary system.

Rebecca Solnit described this summer as part of a war we have launched on nature. Her point was not only that climate breakdown produces fire, heat and flood, but that it has begun to take ordinary pleasures from us—the experience of summer itself.

But Control Your Concrete leaves me wondering about the phrase war on nature. A war usually assumes two sides. The living world is not standing opposite us. We are inside it. The atmosphere we alter is the atmosphere we breathe. The forests we open to roads, the rivers we divert, the animals we manage and the climate we destabilize belong to systems in which we are participants too.

So perhaps the deeper contrast is not nature versus civilization.

It is between the structures we inherited and the world we actually inhabit. Between boundaries and systems. Between control and responsibility.

The film begins with small evidence of life escaping our arrangements—a hornet in a traffic signal, a weed in asphalt, water continuing to move.

By the end of August, the same question has become much larger:

What would our institutions look like if they were designed for the living world rather than imposed upon it?

See also: Cody Delistraty. Look Up at the Sky Tonight. The Perseid Meteor Shower Will Awe You . 12 Aug 2026. The New York Times.

Experiencing awe makes us happier, healthier and more fulfilled. Why not watch the Perseid meteor shower to have a bit more awe in your life?

See also: Dharna Noor. Against the wind: despite Trump’s attacks, unions are fighting for good US clean energy jobs . 23 Aug 2026. The Guardian.

Since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, a growing labor movement has addressed the climate crisis and economic inequality.

See also: Michael Kimmelman. Visuals by Tom Wilson. Behind the Mysterious Symbols Spray-Painted on Our Streets . 24 Aug 2026. The New York Times.

All over New York’s sidewalks and sewers, colored markings hide in plain sight, telling construction crews where to dig and creating accidental art.

See also: Dharna Noor. Is the environmental impact of datacentres finally cutting through? . 28 Aug 2026. The Guardian.

In this week’s newsletter: Anti-datacentre sentiment is growing across the political spectrum in the US – and the public is only just finding out about the potential effects on their energy bills.

See also: Damian Carrington. “Breakthrough” as Turkmenistan starts fixing “mindboggling” methane mega-leaks . 31 Aug 2026. The Guardian.

Secretive state begins repairs on ageing facilities after being revealed as worst country for leaks of potent greenhouse gas.

See also: Rebecca Solnit. Trump’s plan to sell off a part of Yosemite is what oligarchy looks like . 31 Aug 2026. The Guardian.

Public lands belong to all of us. No one should plunder those lands for profit.

See also: Nesrine Malik. The Nepal floods seem a world away – but make no mistake, climate breakdown will affect us all . 31 Aug 2026. The Guardian.

Richer countries might have more resources to deal with catastrophe, but this problem grips the entire planet, however much leaders may want to deny it.

See: Parade

See: What broke the Safe Drinking Water Act?

See: High court could melt climate-change cases

See: This Website is a Crash Course In Fracking

See: Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet | 350.org Founder Bill McKibben

See: Smoke Signals

See: Energy in Depth

See: Energy in Depth – SourceWatch