Articles by David Roberts

Like blogging, but with my voice

One of the things I constantly* hear from Gristmill readers is, "David, we adore your writing, but what about your voice? We long to hear it!"

Well I give my fans what they want, so this morning, at the nightmarish hour of 7:00AM, I dragged my ass out of bed and spoke on the phone with Earthbeat Radio, a syndicated public-radio show out of D.C. The subject was "political climate change": Bush's alleged new climate policy, Gore's climate-policy speech, and related issues.

If you're eager to hear my congested, foggy, morning croak, you can download the show as an mp3 here (it's the second link down). You'll just have to trust me that my voice is much more mellifluous after several cups of coffee.

(*never)

And then I’m done!

I've just now gotten around to closely reading Gore's speech, and felt the usual mix of admiration and sorrow at what could have been. Three bits jumped out at me that I haven't highlighted yet.

First, a little hometown pride:

Many individuals and businesses have decided to take an approach known as "Zero Carbon." They are reducing their CO2 as much as possible and then offsetting the rest with reductions elsewhere including by the planting of trees. At least one entire community -- Ballard, a city of 18,000 people in Washington State -- is embarking on a goal of making the entire community zero carbon.

Ballard in effect! Wo0t!

Ahem.

Second, a little wonkiness:

Paging a Mr. Lomborg

Who's the object of James Inhofe's latest literary crush?

Why, none other than our old friend Bjorn Lomborg!

A visual representation of the federal budget

Want a truly horrifying look at where your tax money goes? Visit Death and Taxes 2007, where they have a big graph that can (fair warning) suck up an hour of your time. It breaks down federal discretionary spending visually, which gives a real, immediate sense of our priorities.

Looking for the EPA? Oh, it's that wee little circle in the upper right. Sigh.