You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
A conversation with the author of The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade
It was questionable if we needed a second season of Tiger King — or, let’s be honest, a first season. Regardless, if Netflix ever decides it’s interested in a story that features surprisingly charming criminals, IWT violations, and yes, even possibly murder (but without the tabloid tone and mullets), producers might look in the future to Jared D. Margulies’ delightful debut, The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade.
Wait, illicit succulent trade? you might be wondering. Oh yes.
From the cliffs of California and the deserts of Brazil to the markets of Seoul and the private greenhouses of Czechia, Margulies follows the extraction and relocation of plants so rare that they might only exist in one valley or mountainside in the world. Weaving in ample philosophy and research about what drives these sorts of obsessions — as well as his personal reflections as he, in turn, is captivated by the lovable, spiky plants — The Cactus Hunters is just the right balance of edgy and academic.
Last week, I caught up with Margulies about the process of researching the book, being mistaken for an undercover cop by his subjects, and the lie that is “the green thumb,” among other topics. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You open The Cactus Hunters with a story about how you were going to study the illegal trade of tiger bones when you came across a story about saguaro cactus rustling that piqued your interest and sent you on this journey. What most stands out to you as the differences between the illegal trade of animals and animal products and the world of illegal cactus trading?
To clarify, I never actually got around to studying the illegal trade in tiger bones. I had encountered it a little bit in my past research on human-wildlife conflicts.
But there are a lot of important differences: One of the things that made the illegal plant trade so interesting to study, compared to illegal trade in animals, is that it receives a lot less attention, so there was just a lot more to learn that people hadn’t already researched. But also, the way that this material and these plants can move around the world — there are so many more options available because of the nature of plants. So if what you’re after is the genetics of the plant, to be able to grow them somewhere else in the world, there’s not just the one plant but there’s the cacti propagate, for instance. Pups. Their seeds. You can make cuttings of plants. None of these things are really available to people interested in illegal trade and animals. That affects supply chains and how these things can move around the world.
Also, because of the lack of attention to illegal plant trade compared to animal trade, the subject is a lot less criminalized. I would argue that my access to informants and research participants was a lot better because it did happen that, every now and then, people thought I was a cop. Or maybe, like, an undercover detective. But usually within pretty short order, they realized that wasn’t the case and I was generally interested in trying to understand their perspectives. I think that it would be a lot harder to develop trust within certain trades that are a lot more heavily criminalized.
Over the course of the book, you encounter the Indiana Jones of plants and the Robin Hood of cacti, among others. Can you talk a little about why these enthusiasts, who clearly care deeply about conservation, sometimes break the law by smuggling seeds or entire cacti out of the places where they naturally grow?
One of the fascinating things that really gripped me was this seeming contradiction, where you have people who are made out as conservation villains by certain actors seeing themselves as unsung conservation heroes. The reason for that is, for a lot of these collectors, they saw their community as really passionate people who wanted to get access to the plants that become objects of their desires. By and large, the people who want these plants aren’t trying to do harm to the species in the world, and they care a lot about them. But they also recognize that in their desire is something fairly insatiable and that people are going to go to lengths to get the plant that they have to go to.
For a lot of these collectors, they might see engaging in a kind of illegal activity as still a socially acceptable behavior, if it meant it got material out into the world in a way that people might want it. And the goal there, the long-term goal, is to try to reduce demand on wild harvesting of plants and wild populations. If you get a little bit of material out into the communities that delight in these plants, then you can start grafting them, propagating them, growing them from seed, and, in theory, get that material out into the world.
I wanted to take that perspective seriously. It’s a hard thing to study empirically and so it was important for me to try to be open to a really diverse set of opinions about the right way to do conservation.
You leave most of the sources in the book, including those working within the law, anonymous. Why did you make that decision?
The really short answer is, I was part of a larger research project called BIOSEC, which was run by Professor Rosaleen Duffy at the University of Sheffield in the Department of Politics and International Relations, and we were using a fairly symmetrical ethics approval process, or what in the U.S. we would call an institutional review board approval. Because a number of us were studying illicit economies, in order to ensure research-subject protection and anonymity and security, we were required to make all of our sources anonymous.
But this caused some issues because, on the one hand, it meant that everyone in the book is anonymous, even if they’re people who are law enforcement officials or botanists who would have probably really enjoyed having their names in the book. I regret that.
Most interesting, though, were the number of collectors who were mad at me because they’re also anonymous. One of the reasons for that was they saw anonymity as being suggestive of wrongdoing and for a lot of these people, they don’t feel like what they’re doing is wrong, necessarily, even if it’s against the law. They wanted their story told. I think one of the reasons I had good access to the kinds of interlocutors I had was because they felt like I was providing a space for them to get their version of the story out into the world.
You were asked to be an expert witness in a case against a South Korean smuggler who took thousands of plants from the California coast. How do you navigate moments like this, when your position as an illicit trade researcher is perhaps in tension with your own ethical code?
This was a really difficult decision for me, and I write about this. I went back and forth about whether or not to serve as an expert witness, which in this case just required writing a statement. I never had to go to court or, you know, be on a witness stand — thank goodness. But I go back and forth about if I would do it again.
I think that in the end, I chose to do it because I realized that my testimony would only serve to probably reduce the sentence that this person was facing. And I don’t say that because I think that what they were doing was okay. It was really bad and really harmful to this species of plant. I just don’t think that criminalization and incarceration actually do rehabilitative work or serve much function. It costs us a lot of money as taxpayers and causes harm.
It was complicated; I guess that’s how I would leave it. I debated whether or not to include [the story] in the book but I felt like, in the end, it would be wrong not to include it. I think that if people eventually found out I had served in that capacity, they might felt like I was trying to not disclose something. But yeah, I have some ambiguous feelings about it. In the end, what I was asked to actually do was very limited: I was just asked to put a value on these plants. But as I wrote in my letter to the judge, that value in monetary terms is such an arbitrary thing. The price of those plants has declined precipitously since I wrote that, and it had already gone down a lot since the person who sold them stole them. How interesting, though, that the court of law — at least in the United States — in order to assess the damage done to the state, it had to be valued in monetary terms.
I really liked the inclusion of the story. It’s interesting for a researcher of illicit and illegal trade to all of a sudden be dragged into the concrete legal system, and have it, you know, ask something of you.
Sometimes academics are hard on ourselves in that we think we put in all this work and do all this writing and no one actually reads it. And that’s not true. People do read your work when you publish it and you should think about who those people might be. They might be district attorneys for the state of California. People will use your work, and you should think from the outset about what the social implications of that might be. It was a big lesson for me.
At the end of the book, you write that your experiences in the cactus and succulent community have left you with hope that meaningful change is possible “not through the repressions of desire but through its celebration.” After spending so much time among people that some might call poachers, what makes you optimistic?
We have so many examples from other illicit economies where prohibition doesn’t work. I am concerned by a tendency to move in that direction. Given that we’re talking about plants — you know, as far as we know, this conversation could be different in 50 years — but we’re not having to really think about the welfare issues of, say, illegal trade in animals. There are pragmatic solutions to these problems. This material could get out into the world so that people who want these plants can get it in a way that doesn’t harm wild-growing species.
There’s still a ways to go in working through regulatory conventions to support those efforts. And importantly, in doing so, supporting the people who should have the most support, which I would argue are the communities in places in the world that have lived with these plants the longest.
I see hopeful promise in this, and I saw a whole lot of love. I really did. I saw a lot of love between people and plants, and what that can do for people in moving into developing more careful relations with plants and other species. I don’t have a large collection of cacti and succulents, but I do have some, and I have like a cactus right now that’s in flower. Do you want to see it?
Yes!
This is where I think it’s fun, to think about what plants can teach us—
Oh, it’s gorgeous!
This is a Mammillaria laui. Named for Alfred Lau, who I write about in one of the chapters of the book — a German who lived in Mexico, who has a lot of different species named after him. This is Mammillaria laui, subspecies subducta. It’s got this gorgeous crown of pink flowers.
I love having these plants. Specifically, I’ve started a small collection of plants that are associated with particular people that I wrote about, or that I thought about. Bringing some of that social history to our plants, I think, is a really nice thing that people can do. Learn about where our plants come from and the histories of how they got to where we are.
That’s kind of what set me off on this whole journey, anyway. I think there’s a lot of opportunity for thinking thoughtfully about the place of these plants in the world and how they travel and maybe, hopefully, that can help move us towards a more ethical kind of relation.
Are you worried now that once you collect all of the plants that are connected to your book, you’ll throw your whole collection out?
I don’t think I have a strong collector tendency, per se. I have been accused of being a low-key hoarder before. I’m excited to think about how I’m going to slowly develop a collection over time. Yeah, but your reference — the worst thing that can happen to a collector is completing a collection. Freud wrote about this in the context of completing his collection of statues and dying days later. This one collector who I went to see, I thought I was going to see a giant greenhouse of cacti, but I found a bunch of Mexican chili plants. Because he’d just tossed [the cacti collection] off, he was done with it. I don’t see myself going down that road but one never knows.
For someone reading this interview who might be interested in collecting, where would you say to start?
We need to get over this idea that cacti and succulent plants are great house plants because they don’t require any care. It’s not true. Everyone I know who’s had a succulent has killed it very quickly.
I killed mine.
Yeah, if you just throw a succulent on, like, a north-facing windowsill, it’s not going to do well, especially if you ignore it.
Also, get over the idea that there are natural people in the world with a green thumb — I think that is also nonsense. We just need to spend time learning about what these plants need. One of the ways you can do that is by paying attention to them.
In terms of obtaining material — you know, so much plant material can also just be found for free, gifted from friends or colleagues or the community. A lot of collector clubs, like, say, the Cactus and Succulent Society of America here in the U.S., I believe may even send you free seeds of cacti, and stuff like that.
The thing that I want to start doing is trying to grow cacti from seed. They’re slow-growing plants but I think it’d be really fun to actually watch that process unfold. And it’s quite easy to obtain seeds for a lot of these plants. Just, you know, be careful where you’re buying stuff from. Reputable nurseries are a good source. But be wary of buying from unknown people on the internet. That might be where people start to get into trouble.
Is there anything I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to let me know about your book or your experience writing it before I let you go?
I’m not too prescriptive at the end of the book about what I think the answer is. Some people may find that frustrating, like, “Oh, but you didn’t tell us like what should we do” or “What’s the right response?” One of the reasons for that was I just wanted to let people develop some of their own thoughts about this. But also it’s because the work isn’t done.
I’m developing some work right now dealing with illegal succulent trade in South Africa with some colleagues, both in South Korea but also in South Africa. I’m doing a new project on illicit Venus flytrap harvesting and the carnivorous plant trade. I’m trying to continue the process of thinking and learning with plants. But the work continues.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
It would have delivered a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power.
The Bureau of Land Management says the largest solar project in Nevada has been canceled amidst the Trump administration’s federal permitting freeze.
Esmeralda 7 was supposed to produce a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power – equal to nearly all the power supplied to southern Nevada by the state’s primary public utility. It would do so with a sprawling web of solar panels and batteries across the western Nevada desert. Backed by NextEra Energy, Invenergy, ConnectGen and other renewables developers, the project was moving forward at a relatively smooth pace under the Biden administration, albeit with significant concerns raised by environmentalists about its impacts on wildlife and fauna. And Esmeralda 7 even received a rare procedural win in the early days of the Trump administration when the Bureau of Land Management released the draft environmental impact statement for the project.
When Esmeralda 7’s environmental review was released, BLM said the record of decision would arrive in July. But that never happened. Instead, Donald Trump issued an executive order as part of a deal with conservative hardliners in Congress to pass his tax megabill, which also effectively repealed the Inflation Reduction Act’s renewable electricity tax credits. This led to subsequent actions by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to freeze all federal permitting decisions for solar energy.
Flash forward to today, when BLM quietly updated its website for Esmeralda 7 permitting to explicitly say the project’s status is “cancelled.” Normally when the agency says this, it means developers pulled the plug.
I’ve reached out to some of the companies behind Esmeralda 7 but was unable to reach them in time for publication. If I hear from them confirming the project is canceled – or that BLM is wrong in some way – I will let you know.
It’s not perfect, but pretty soon, it’ll be available for under $30,000.
Here’s what you need to know about the rejuvenated Chevrolet Bolt: It’s back, it’s better, and it starts at under $30,000.
Although the revived 2027 Bolt doesn’t officially hit the market until January 2026, GM revealed the new version of the iconic affordable EV at a Wednesday evening event at the Universal Studios backlot in Los Angeles. The assembled Bolt owners and media members drove the new cars past Amity Island from Jaws and around the Old West and New York sets that have served as the backdrops of so many television shows and movies. It was star treatment for a car that, like its predecessor, isn’t the fanciest EV around. But given the giveaway patches that read “Chevy Bolt: Back by popular demand,” it’s clear that GM heard the cries of people who missed having the plucky electric hatchback on the market.
The Bolt died at the height of its powers. The original Bolt EV and Bolt EUV sold in big numbers in the late 2010s and early 2020s, powered by a surprisingly affordable price compared to competitor EVs and an interior that didn’t feel cramped despite its size as a smallish hatchback. In 2023, the year Chevy stopped selling it, the Bolt was the third-best-selling EV in America after Tesla’s top two models.
Yet the original had a few major deficiencies that reflected the previous era of EVs. The most egregious of which was its charging speed that topped out at around 50 kilowatts. Given that today’s high-speed chargers can reach 250 to 350 kilowatts — and an even faster future could be on the way — the Bolt’s pit stops on a road trip were a slog that didn’t live up to its peppy name.
Thankfully, Chevy fixed it. Charging speed now reaches 150 kilowatts. While that figure isn’t anywhere near the 350 kilowatts that’s possible in something like the Hyundai Ioniq 9, it’s a threefold improvement for the Bolt that lets it go from 10% to 80% charged in a respectable 26 minutes. The engineers said they drove a quartet of the new cars down old Route 66 from the Kansas City area, where the Bolt is made, to Los Angeles to demonstrate that the EV was finally ready for such an adventure.
From the outside, the 2027 Bolt is virtually indistinguishable from the old car, but what’s inside is a welcome leap forward. New Bolt has a lithium-ion-phosphate, or LFP battery that holds 65 kilowatt-hours of energy, but still delivers 255 miles of max range because of the EV’s relatively light weight. Whereas older EVs encourage drivers to stop refueling at around 80%, the LFP battery can be charged to 100% regularly without the worry of long-term damage to the battery.
The Bolt is GM’s first EV with the NACS charging standard, the former Tesla proprietary plug, which would allow the little Chevy to visit Tesla Superchargers without an adapter (though its port placement on the front of the driver’s side is backwards from the way older Supercharger stations are built). Now built on GM’s Ultium platform, the Bolt shares its 210-horsepower electric motor with the Chevy Equinox EV and gets vehicle-to-load capability, meaning you’ll be able to tap into its battery energy for other uses such as powering your home.
But it’s the price that’s the real wow factor. Bolt will launch with an RS version that gets the fancier visual accents and starts at $32,000. The Bolt LT that will be available a little later will eventually start as low as $28,995, a figure that includes the destination charge that’s typically slapped on top of a car’s price, to the tune of an extra $1,000 to $2,000 on delivery. Perhaps it’s no surprise that GM revealed this car just a week after the end of the $7,500 federal tax credit for EV purchases (and just a day after Tesla announced its budget versions of the Model Y and Model 3). Bringing in a pretty decent EV at under $30,000 without the help of a big tax break is a pretty big deal.
The car is not without compromises. Plenty of Bolt fans are aghast that Chevy abandoned the Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integrations that worked with the first Bolt in favor of GM’s own built-in infotainment system as the only option. Although the new Bolt was based on the longer, “EUV” version of the original, this is still a pretty compact car without a ton of storage space behind the back seats. Still, for those who truly need a bigger vehicle, there’s the Chevy Equinox EV.
For as much time as I’ve spent clamoring for truly affordable EVs that could compete with entry-level gas cars on prices, the Bolt’s faults are minor. At $29,000 for an electric vehicle in the U.S., there is practically zero competition until the new Nissan Leaf arrives. The biggest threats to the Bolt are America’s aversion to small cars and the rapid rates of depreciation that could allow someone to buy a much larger, gently used EV for the price of the new Chevy. But the original Bolt found a steady footing among drivers who wanted that somewhat counter-cultural car — and this one is a lot better.
“Old economy” companies like Caterpillar and Williams are cashing in by selling smaller, less-efficient turbines to impatient developers.
From the perspective of the stock market, you’re either in the AI business or you’re not. If you build the large language models pushing out the frontiers of artificial intelligence, investors love it. If you rent out the chips the large language models train on, investors love it. If you supply the servers that go in the data centers that power the large language models, investors love it. And, of course, if you design the chips themselves, investors love it.
But companies far from the software and semiconductor industry are profiting from this boom as well. One example that’s caught the market’s fancy is Caterpillar, better known for its scale-defying mining and construction equipment, which has become a “secular winner” in the AI boom, writes Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal.
Typically construction businesses do well when the overall economy is doing well — that is, they don’t typically take off with a major technological shift like AI. Now, however, Caterpillar has joined the ranks of the “picks and shovels” businesses capitalizing on the AI boom thanks to its gas turbine business, which is helping power OpenAI’s Stargate data center project in Abilene, Texas.
Just one link up the chain is another classic “old economy” business: Williams Companies, the natural gas infrastructure company that controls or has an interest in over 33,000 miles of pipeline and has been around in some form or another since the early 20th century.
Gas pipeline companies are not supposed to be particularly exciting, either. They build large-scale infrastructure. Their ratemaking is overseen by federal regulators. They pay dividends. The last gas pipeline company that got really into digital technology, well, uh, it was Enron.
But Williams’ shares are up around 28% in the past year — more than Caterpillar. That’s in part, due to its investing billions in powering data centers with behind the meter natural gas.
Last week, Williams announced that it would funnel over $3 billion into two data center projects, bringing its total investments in powering AI to $5 billion. This latest bet, the company said, is “to continue to deliver speed-to-market solutions in grid-constrained markets.”
If we stipulate that the turbines made by Caterpillar are powering the AI boom in a way analogous to the chips designed by Nvidia or AMD and fabricated by TSMC, then Williams, by developing behind the meter gas-fired power plants, is something more like a cloud computing provider or data center developer like CoreWeave, except that its facilities house gas turbines, not semiconductors.
The company has “seen the rapid emergence of the need for speed with respect to energy,” Williams Chief Executive Chad Zamarin said on an August earnings call.
And while Williams is not a traditional power plant developer or utility, it knows its way around natural gas. “We understand pipeline capacity,” Zamarin said on a May earnings call. “We obviously build a lot of pipeline and turbine facilities. And so, bringing all the different pieces together into a solution that is ready-made for a customer, I think, has been truly a differentiator.”
Williams is already behind the Socrates project for Meta in Ohio, described in a securities filing as a $1.6 billion project that will provide 400 megawatts of gas-fired power. That project has been “upsized” to $2 billion and 750 megawatts, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that “energy constraints” are a more pressing issue for artificial intelligence development than whether the marginal dollar invested is worth it. In other words, Zuckerberg expects to run out of energy before he runs out of projects that are worth pursuing.
That’s great news for anyone in the business of providing power to data centers quickly. The fact that developers seem to have found their answer in the Williamses and Caterpillars of the world, however, calls into question a key pillar of the renewable industry’s case for itself in a time of energy scarcity — that the fastest and cheapest way to get power for data centers is a mix of solar and batteries.
Just about every renewable developer or clean energy expert I’ve spoken to in the past year has pointed to renewables’ fast timeline and low cost to deploy compared to building new gas-fired, grid-scale generation as a reason why utilities and data centers should prefer them, even absent any concerns around greenhouse gas emissions.
“Renewables and battery storage are the lowest-cost form of power generation and capacity,” Next Era chief executive John Ketchum said on an April earnings call. “We can build these projects and get new electrons on the grid in 12 to 18 months.” Ketchum also said that the price of a gas-fired power plant had tripled, meanwhile lead times for turbines are stretching to the early 2030s.
The gas turbine shortage, however, is most severe for large turbines that are built into combined cycle systems for new power plants that serve the grid.
GE Vernova is discussing delivering turbines in 2029 and 2030. While one manufacturer of gas turbines, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, has announced that it plans to expand its capacity, the industry overall remains capacity constrained.
But according to Morgan Stanley, Williams can set up behind the meter power plants in 18 months. xAI’s Colossus data center in Memphis, which was initially powered by on-site gas turbines, went from signing a lease to training a large language model in about six months.
These behind the meter plants often rely on cheaper, smaller, simple cycle turbines, which generate electricity just from the burning of natural gas, compared to combined cycle systems, which use the waste heat from the gas turbines to run steam turbines and generate more energy. The GE Vernova 7HA combined cycle turbines that utility Duke Energy buys, for instance, range in output from 290 to 430 megawatts. The simple cycle turbines being placed in Ohio for the Meta data center range in output from about 14 megawatts to 23 megawatts.
Simple cycle turbines also tend to be less efficient than the large combined cycle system used for grid-scale natural gas, according to energy analysts at BloombergNEF. The BNEF analysts put the emissions difference at almost 1,400 pounds of carbon per megawatt-hour for the single turbines, compared to just over 800 pounds for combined cycle.
Overall, Williams is under contract to install 6 gigawatts of behind-the-meter power, to be completed by the first half of 2027, Morgan Stanley analysts write. By comparison, a joint venture between GE Vernova, the independent power producer NRG, and the construction company Kiewit to develop combined cycle gas-fired power plants has a timeline that could stretch into 2032.
The Williams projects will pencil out on their own, the company says, but they have an obvious auxiliary benefit: more demand for natural gas.
Williams’ former chief executive, Alan Armstrong, told investors in a May earnings call that he was “encouraged” by the “indirect business we are seeing on our gas transmission systems,” i.e. how increased natural gas consumption benefits the company’s traditional pipeline business.
Wall Street has duly rewarded Williams for its aggressive moves.
Morgan Stanley analysts boosted their price target for the stock from $70 to $83 after last week’s $3 billion announcement, saying in a note to clients that the company has “shifted from an underappreciated value (impaired terminal value of existing assets) to underappreciated growth (accelerating project pipeline) story.” Mizuho Securities also boosted its price target from $67 to $72, with analyst Gabriel Moreen telling clients that Williams “continues to raise the bar on the scope and potential benefits.”
But at the same time, Moreen notes, “the announcement also likely enhances some investor skepticism around WMB pushing further into direct power generation and, to a lesser extent, prioritizing growth (and growth capex) at the expense of near-term free cash flow and balance sheet.”
In other words, the pipeline business is just like everyone else — torn between prudence in a time of vertiginous economic shifts and wanting to go all-in on the AI boom.
Williams seems to have decided on the latter. “We will be a big beneficiary of the fast rising data center power load,” Armstrong said.