Articles by David Roberts

Nature and allergies

Want to make sure your kids don't have bad allergies? Take them out into messy, dirty nature.

Energy bills proliferating (and sucking)

I can't decide whether to be heartened or depressed beyond reason by this NYT story on the recent flurry of energy-related bills in Congress. I'm leaning toward the latter.

Since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita shut down refineries in the Gulf of Mexico region last summer, speeding the rise of gasoline costs, House members have introduced 267 energy-related bills and senators have introduced 210, according to an analysis by the Senate energy committee.

On one hand, it's nice that the energy issue is rising in importance and that legislators are paying attention.

On the other, the vast majority of the proposed bills are awful. Worse yet, the few that actually have a chance of passing are among the worst:

Random thought of the day

In talking with Anthony Flint and reading Big Coal, a parallel occurred to me.

I asked Flint about the historical roots of single-use development -- the kind that separated out residential areas and led to the sprawl we now know and love. He told me that such zoning measures were originally passed by progressives, in an effort to move the dirty, disease-causing elements of urban life -- e.g., slaughterhouses and factories -- away from where people live. It was concern for the health of the underclass that led to single-use development.

Similarly, when coal turbines were first developed, one business model was to build them small and make them residential appliances (to sell machines rather than electricity, in effect). But the early turbines were dirty. So eventually, savvy businessfolk moved the turbines far out of town and made them huge.

Early on in America's industrial development, the impetus was to separate and spread out the various functions of human community, because the industrial functions were filthy and unhealthy. But we got stuck with that dissipation.

A principal part of this century's environmental fight is to reintegrate and condense the functions of human community.

Mackey v. Pollan

Foodie journalist Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (review here; interview with Pollan here) makes some disturbing points about the increasingly industrial character of organic agriculture. It uses as its exemplar of "industrial organic" the burgeoning Whole Foods Market.

Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey took quite a bit of umbrage at that, and responded with a long, passionate letter about the work his store has done to nurture the organic movement and local agriculture.

On his blog (which is stupidly behind the NYT $elect wall), Pollan responds at some length.

Both letters are interesting reading, but the dispute basically boils down to Mackey saying "we do buy local" and Pollan saying "it doesn't really seem that way, but I sure hope you move in that direction." They are more or less in agreement on the direction things need to go.

I thought this point by Pollan was apt: