Alexander C. Kaufman is an American writer and award-winning reporter who has covered energy, climate change, environmental policy and geopolitics for more than a decade.
He’s chased stories around the world, from the Brazilian Amazon to Greenland’s ice sheet, Mongolia’s frigid steppe to Finland’s underground nuclear waste repository, China’s first atom-smashing lab to the Netherlands’ only atomic power station. His reporting explores the nuances of the energy transition, at times challenging prevailing narratives on climate solutions and spotlighting the price people in places like Mississippi and Puerto Rico pay for policies written in faraway capitals.
A frequent public-affairs commentator, Kaufman has been a monthly guest on BBC World Service’s “Business Matters” for the past nine years. He’s appeared on stage at conferences such as WebSummit and SXSW and over airwaves on MSNBC, NPR, and international broadcasters in Australia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Singapore.
His 2021 children’s nonfiction book Earth’s Aquarium, an exploration of 15 aquatic ecosystems and the threats they face, was published in the U.S. by Abrams Books and translated into four languages.
Kaufman got his start in journalism at 15, writing for The Long-Islander, a nearly 200-year-old weekly Walt Whitman founded. He went on to work on staff at The Boston Globe, The Wrap, FishbowlNY, the International Business Times and HuffPost, where he spent 11 years covering energy, business and climate change as a senior enterprise reporter.
He’s the author of the Substack newsletter FIELD NOTES and has written for Canary Media, The New Republic, GZERO, City & State, OneZero (RIP), and Pacific Standard. His work has been syndicated by Yahoo, Wired, Mother Jones, Slate, Grist and Canada’s National Observer. He has advised and served on the boards of various nonprofit newsrooms and previously worked waiting tables, serving coffee, manning cash registers, and stocking retail shelves.
A fourth-generation New Yorker raised on Long Island, he lives with his wife and their cat in what’s colloquially known as South Brooklyn but technically considered Southern Brooklyn.