Articles by David Roberts

In the NYT and Sierra

Congrats to The New York Times for its excellent "Energy Challenge" series, which Revkin tells me will be an ongoing concern for the paper into the new year. It's packed with info and marks the decisive mainstreaming of this debate.

That said, I'm not sure the reader forum is working for me. Surely there's a better way of presenting this stuff than a single vertical column of comments -- as of right now, 412 comments. It's a bit overwhelming.

Anyway, while I'm passing out kudos, check out the latest issue of Sierra Magazine as well. It's also about "Energizing America." It hypes energy efficiency and bashes ethanol and nuclear power, and that's aces in my book.

Global warming is one of his top priorities

You probably heard that John Edwards has officially declared his candidacy for president. Here are his top five priorities:

• Provide moral leadership in the world
• Strengthen our middle class and end poverty
• Guarantee universal health care for every American
• Lead the fight against global warming
• Get America and other countries off our addiction to oil

Edwards, who's been working primarily on poverty since the 2004 election, announced in the 9th Ward of New Orleans. Here's the video:

Many goodies herein

The holidays have left me way behind the news, and you know what that means: a linky post! On your mark, get set, analysis-free hand-waving:

The feds may list polar bears as endangered. That could trigger Endangered Species Act provisions that force the government to take steps to protect the remaining bears. Only way to do that? Stop global warming. This is one to keep a close eye on.

Joel Makower flags some potentially historic news: Wal-Mart has put out an RFP for solar systems to power its stores in five states. If a proposal is accepted (the store will announce on Feb. 28) and the store buys as much as it says it will, this will be by far the largest corporate procurement of solar power ever, and will transform the solar industry. And to those who will inevitably chime in with the bit about how Wal-Mart is still evil, I remind you: The choice is not between solar Wal-Mart and no Wal-Mart; the choice is between solar Wal-Mart and the status quo.

I missed this when it first went up, but over on Worldchanging there's a fantastic, fascinating first-person account from Serge de Gheldere of traveling to Nashville to learn how to give Al Gore's climate slide show.

He foresaw the problem

Former U.S. President Gerald Ford died yesterday at 93.

At the bottom of this post is a long section on energy from Ford's 1975 State of the Union speech. In it he noted that America's surplus oil -- and its attendant ability to stabilize world oil prices and prevent the emergence of a petroleum cartel -- had vanished in 1970; we had become net importers of oil. He worried about our loss of energy independence and recommended a crash course in energy production.

You will recall that President Carter took those concerns seriously and put in place programs to address them.

But the cartel that formed after we lost our energy independence, OPEC, quite enjoyed our dependence. Rather than use it to hurt us, it plied the world market with cheap oil, upon which floated enormous U.S. prosperity. Ronald Reagan abandoned all pretense of fighting for energy independence and instead cruised on cheap-oil-driven economic growth to "Morning in America."