Articles by David Roberts
David Roberts was a staff writer for Grist. You can follow him on Twitter, if you're into that sort of thing.
All Articles
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He would have us accept disaster
Robert Samuelson is fixated on pushing a simple point about global warming: we can't do anything about it.
Like so many pundits pushing right-wing talking points around economics, he pitches this stance as a kind of brave, hard-headed realism, in contrast to all those other deluded fools who think we can solve problems. Why anyone would want to spend his time on this planet explicitly and openly fighting progress on the biggest challenge humanity faces is beyond me, I'll confess. But to each his own.
I wrote about his defeatism in an earlier column, and now he's at it again. After some unsubstantiated bashing of the Stern report, he lists three reasons why the problem is hopeless.
With today's technologies, we don't know how to cut greenhouse gases in politically and economically acceptable ways.
This is ... what's the word? ... bullshit.
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It kicked ass
The Grist reader party in San Francisco on Friday was a smashing success. Over 300 eco-glitterati packed into the art gallery, and they were resplendent: young, urbane, and utterly destructive to every caricature that's ever attached to the word "environmentalist." A reporter who was there researching a story on Grist, speaking afterwards, was moved to exclaim: "I can't believe how hot everybody was!"
Indeed.
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Moderate or not, he had to go
Among the interminable analyses of the election running in the New York Times this weekend came this wistful piece from defeated Rhode Island Senate incumbent Lincoln Chafee, who chalks his defeat up to anti-Bush "virulence."He recalls meeting with his fellow Northeastern Republican moderates and Dick Cheney shortly after the 2000 election. He was somewhat taken aback -- all of them were, I imagine -- by the uncompromising partisan, ideological agenda Cheney promised to pursue. He sent a letter to Cheney afterwards, urging moderation. It included this passage:
