Articles by David Roberts

To the tune of $25 million

Chevron has just made a $25 million research grant to UC Davis for research on cellulosic ethanol. (Press releases from UC Davis and Chevron.)

This was brought to my attention by reader D. Roberts (really!), who says, "To my knowledge this is one of the largest research awards ever made to any university (other than one outlier at Stanford)."

This is excellent news. The faster we can get cellulosic up and running, the more we can avoid building an enormous and disastrous corn-ethanol infrastructure.

Seattle’s — possibly the country’s — coolest new neighborhood

This past Sunday, I went out to the Highpoint neighborhood in West Seattle to attend the Green Living Expo.

Highpoint is extraordinary (check out this map of the master plan). When it's completed (about a third is finished at this point), it will be the largest interurban redevelopment in the country. I won't get into all the details -- check out the website -- but here's the short summary:

The community will be mixed-use, mixed-income, and mixed-ethnicity. They're connecting up the streets with the surrounding grid. All the sidewalks (and one test street) are made of permeable concrete that allows rainwater through. They're reserving fully half of the (eventually) 1,600 housing units for low-income buyers and renters. They've developed a massive, award-winning drainage plan based on bioswales, to naturally clean water as it drains into the neighborhood's stream and pond. The housing units are all built to Energy Star and Built Green standards. Housing styles and colors are purposefully diverse. Walkways connect pocket parks, green space, and community gardens throughout.

This was all done with intensive community involvement. It's really a remarkable achievement.

Anyway, I took a bunch of pictures -- on, I should caveat, a very cloudy day -- some of which are below the fold.

Lest we all get screwed.

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An excerpt from a new book by George Monbiot

Check out this startling excerpt from George Monbiot's new book Heat.

It's about the climate-change "denial industry," which most of you are probably familiar with. What you may not know about is the peculiar role of the tobacco industry in the whole mess. I've read about this stuff for years and even I was surprised by some of the details.

When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg.