Articles by David Roberts

The greatest email ever

On Sunday, we got one of the greatest emails ever. Here it is:

Dear Gristers!

Last Friday Al Gore was presented the first copy of the Dutch version of his book "An inconvenient truth"; he also attended the grand opening of his film in the prestigious Amsterdam Tuschinski film theatre and introduced his film there. All of this would not have happened without YOU.

I (I am the founder -in 1982- and director of a small environmental communication agency near Amsterdam,) learnt from the book and the film through your daily email. I contacted the Dutch publisher that had published his earlier book about the date the Dutch version would be out. To my astonishment they said they would not publish it ("we did not earn money on his first book, and we changed our publishing policy"). No other Dutch publisher, I found out, had bought the translations rights. So I did, and translated it my self, and organised him to be there at the occasion of the presentation and the film premiere. Attached two photo's of the event (the guy left of Gore is me ... The guy to the right behind Gore on the second photo is the Dutch minister for the Environment).

So: THANK YOU! Without Grist there would definitively NOT have been a Dutch edition.

And as I emailed to you before: I thoroughly enjoy your work as well as they way you do it! Keep up the good work!)

best regards,

Maurits Groen
Maurits Groen Environment & Communication

Here's a picture of Maurits with Gore:

My trip to the Oregon coast

This past weekend I headed down to the annual summer retreat of the Northwest Environmental Defense Center. It was held, as it has been for many years running (around 20, I think), at a little camp called Westwind, perched on the Oregon coast at the mouth of the Salmon River.

Today

Well, it's Columbus Day, North Korea seems to have acquired nukes, Iraq is falling apart, the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, a sex scandal threatens to topple the Republican leadership in the House, polls are indicating a Democratic landslide in the mid-term elections, and slowly, incrementally, invisibly, never on the front page, the climate continues to warm and the end of cheap energy moves ever closer.

Me

Sorry again for my blog absence. I'm afraid it will be ongoing, as I'm leaving mid-day today to head down to Westwind in Oregon to speak at a meeting of the Northwest Environmental Defense Center. I'm speaking from notes, but I may try to write it up as a post later.

Also, I hope we can get some discussion going on the God & the Environment series, which is going to expand in coming weeks. I've got several interesting people lined to talk to. This thing started almost by accident -- I had an interview with E.O. Wilson lined up, then the Sleeth book crossed my desk, and then the Moyers PBS special popped up, and then ... it just spiraled out from there. This topic is on a lot of people's minds these days.

As y'all probably know, I'm ambivalent about religion in general, and about the intersection of religion and environmentalism. But I must say the passion and commitment of the people I've talked to recently has been affecting. Putting the factual content of religion aside, it certainly seems to be a source of inspiration that nothing in the secular world has yet matched.

Anyway, lots to talk about. More next week.