#EnvHist Worth Reading: July 2026

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Every month I carefully track the most popular and significant environmental history articles, videos, audio, and other items making their way through the online environmental history (#envhist) community. You can read all of our past #EnvHist Worth Reading lists right here. Here are my choices for items most worth reading from July 2026.

1) Thank God for the Coal Rollers

The entire new issue of Springs is a banger, but I ultimately ended up deciding to highlight this piece by Timothy James LeCain. In it, LeCain examines the social phenomenon of “rolling coal,” which is when someone deliberately modifies a diesel truck so that it emits thick clouds of smoke, and argues that although these coal rollers offer an aggressive display of anti-environmentalism and raw power, they also offer an opportunity for an unexpected and visceral lesson. While well-meaning individuals hide their environmental impact behind efficient vehicles, LeCain contends, coal rollers confront us directly with the toxic, fossil-fueled reality supporting modern society. Ultimately, their jarring, unavoidable pollution provides an urgent, physical reminder of the dark ecological cost powering our everyday freedoms.

2) Importing a Warning: Rachel Carson and the Press Reception of Silent Spring in Francoist Spain (1962–1975)

In this article for Germinate, Andreas Jünger writes about how the reception of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in Spain was uniquely non-polarizing. Initially introduced through a 1964 translation and framed as safe, scientific conservation news, media coverage evaded strict censorship. By the early 1970s, he demonstrates, Carson re-emerged as a powerful symbol of political ecology, empowering journalists to critique state-sponsored pollution. Though initial readership was modest, Jünger argues that Carson’s legacy helped spark Spain’s broader ecological consciousness and subsequent pesticide regulations.

3) Is a new pipeline needed? Energy experts weigh in

Is a new pipeline needed? Spoiler alert – no. In this short interview for CBC Radio’s Morning North with Markus Schwabe, Sean Kheraj delves into Canada’s pipeline past to explain why this is the case, and Richard Masson, former CEO of the Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission, agrees. If you want to learn more about Canada’s pipeline history, check out Kheraj’s “Canada Has Never Had a Leak-Proof Oil Pipeline” and the rest of the Silent Rivers of Oil project.

4) Is the Disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, a New Normal?

The 2023 East Palestine, Ohio train derailment released toxic chemicals, sparking widespread safety concerns. However, proposed rail safety legislation quickly stalled. Viewed through Charles Perrow’s “normal accident theory,” Alex George and Kimberley Thomas argue in this Edge Effects article that the disaster was not an anomaly, but an inevitable feature of a tightly coupled, deregulated rail system. Driven by 1980s deregulation and profit-focused precision schedule railroading, such accidents are structurally built into the industry. They argue that preventing future disasters requires systemic, organizational reform rather than piecemeal regulations.

5) Denning, “Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa,” H-Environment Roundtable 16 no. 10 (2026)

Tina Adcock provides the introduction for this H-Net Environment Roundtable on Andrew Denning’s Automotive Empire, in which he explores how European empires used cars and roads to construct colonial rule in Africa between the 1890s and 1940s. Despite severe fuel, labor, and environmental constraints that thwarted full implementation, “automotive empire” profoundly shaped colonial administration and global capitalism. The roundtable praises the book’s broad, envirotechnical scope while examining its lasting socio-ecological legacies, corporate connections, and impact on modern African infrastructure and political economy.

Feature Image: Pipeline. 15 July 1943. Credit: Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-064704.
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Jessica DeWitt

NiCHE Editor-in-Chief, Social Media Editor at Jessica M. DeWitt: Editing and Consulting
is an environmental historian of Canada and the United States, editor, project manager, consultant, and digital communications strategist. She earned her PhD in History from the University of Saskatchewan in 2019. She is an executive member, editor-in-chief, and social media editor for the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). She is the Managing Editor for the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines and Associate Editor for Environmental Humanities. Closer to home, she is the President of the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society, a Coordinating Team member of Showing Up for Racial Justice Saskatoon-Treaty Six, and a Conservation Advisory Committee member for the Meewasin Valley Authority. She focuses on developing digital techniques and communications that bridge the divide between academia and the general public in order to democratize knowledge access. You can find out more about her and her freelance services at jessicamdewitt.com.

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