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.
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Shags in the wild
While it is not about a strictly environmental topic, I nonetheless feel duty-bound (and proud) to point out that our very own Sarah van Schagen -- author of the wildly popular Something Fishy column -- has a new piece up on CampusProgress.org. Check it out.
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Non-“environmental” environmental policies
It's funny -- on the way to work today, I was thinking about a post on policies that would help the environment but are not traditionally thought of as "environmental." Then John pops up this morning with something very similar. So I guess it's in the air.
One of the common accusations against the environmental movement in the whole death debate was that enviros conceive of "the environment" too narrowly, and thus conceive of their political mandate too narrowly. They focus on technocratic policies about PPB of contaminants in water or new-source regulations on coal plants, instead of trying to build a broad progressive movement.
So. What are some policies that most people would not label "environmental," but which would benefit the environment? Off the top of my head I'd cite:
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TerraPass and verification
TerraPass, sellers of carbon offsets, has undergone its first verification report:
Based on an agreement with Center for Resource Solutions (CRS), creator of the Green-e program, this report details our impact for the year, the sales-supply balance and our distribution of offset projects. The good news, in case you’re wondering, is that we passed!
Big deal, you think? Perhaps for this individual company, but it's quite important that the carbon offsets industry -- which seems to be capturing public attention and taking off -- establish some shared standards of accountability. TP's Tom Arnold says:
We, along with CRS, hope to extend this pilot program into an industry-wide program. That means attracting other industry participants as well as getting feedback on what types of projects qualify for a Green-e like program. The CRS announcement went out this morning and I'm happy to say that NRDC, WRI, Interface Fabrics, climate change experts Seth Baruch and Terry Surles, and others will also participate in a new GHG Advisory Group to help shepherd through a program.
Cool.
(Here's the Green-e press release on the formation of the advisory group.)
