For those paying attention, ICYMI: In Case You Missed It, this more-or-less biweekly compilation of environmental news nuggets, has been a regular feature of Sierra’s online offerings for the past seven years. Dating back a decade, it was a perennial favorite of the print magazine under the heading Up to Speed. This edition, however, is the last one. The earth hasn’t stopped warming:

Natural wonders haven’t ceased:

The clean energy transition continues to defy expectations:

And animals continue to surprise their human cousins:

So ICYMI is not ending for any lack of material. Rather, after 34 years with Sierra, its author is retiring.

Readers can make their own judgments about its merits, but from my point of view, producing ICYMI was a biweekly joy. Collecting the material involved first combing the daily environmental press, especially Politico’s E&E newsletters, The Guardian, and the ever-reliable Associated Press. An environmental journalist’s constant deluge of press releases was a regular gold mine:

As, it must be said, was the oft-derided but still useful platform now known as X. Last but not least was an intrepid network of volunteer item-spotters, who filled my inbox with rich material just, you know, in case I missed it.

A large part of what made this column so pleasurable was, of course, the genius artwork of ace illustrator Peter Arkle. In past retrospectives of his work (here and here, for example), the challenge was in identifying a limited number of favorite images. The high point of my week these many years has been Thursday morning, when Peter’s sketch would hit my inbox, an event invariably met with gasps of astonishment and quite literal LOLs. Without him, ICYMI would not have been possible.

The writerly and aesthetic pleasure of producing ICYMI was, it must be said, counterbalanced by the often dismal subject matter. It was a way of bearing witness to the rapid changes we are inflicting on our planet, and the trends are not good. It used to be extraordinary to note that such-and-such July was the hottest in recorded history; now it almost goes without saying that the next will be hotter than the last. Did the addition of absurdist content dilute the serious message?

Perhaps, but it also made it readable. Sierra once attempted a listing of Bad News events, the in-house slug for which was Doom & Gloom From the Tomb. No one, not even Sierra Club members, can subsist on bad news alone. That’s why I tried to lard ICYMI with hopeful items as well, although reality did not always cooperate by providing them. So absurdism was often left to carry the burden of balancing the tragedy, and it never failed.

“What will I do with these ICYMI items now?” one of my volunteers asked recently. The answer: You keep on finding them. You take note of what is happening in the world, the terrible but not inevitable disasters, the happy signs of progress:

And all the ridiculous, unpredictable, hilarious things that happen in the wide gulf between the two. You pay attention.