Articles by David Roberts

Americans and Climate Change: Setting goals III

"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.

It's perhaps the most disheartening facet of the global warming discussion: Every target for reducing emissions that's taken seriously in political circles is woefully inadequate. How can we begin discussing targets commensurate with the task at hand? That's what gets chewed over in today's excerpt. (It's another long one -- sorry.)

Sierra Club hooks up with steelworkers union

This is fantastic:

The nation's largest manufacturing union, the United Steelworkers of America, and the nation's largest environmental group, the Sierra Club, yesterday announced the formation of an alliance that will do something that labor and environmentalists rarely do: cooperate.

This tells me that the Sierra Club is hip to many of the criticisms of environmentalism raised in the Death debate and recognizes the need to build coalitions, reconnect with progressivism's blue collar roots, and emphasize workaday concerns like jobs and health. This will allow both the club and the union to reach new audiences.

Still, let's not get too excited. This is not a sea change for the steelworkers union. It's been part of the environmental coalition before.

We'll know a corner's been turned when we see coalitions with unions of autoworkers, or mine workers, or coal-fired utility workers. Once those unions see that their best interests are served by sensible regulation and private-sector innovation -- not by siding with corporate fat cats fighting tooth and nail to keep old, tired, backward-looking industrial practices afloat -- we'll know the message is sinking in.

Pombo crushes McCloskey

So, remember how retired Republican lawmaker Pete McCloskey, an environmentalist who co-authored the Endangered Species Act, was going to challenge enviro bête noire Dick Pombo in the CA-11 primary? And the environmental community was going to help him? Yeah, well, he got crushed.

The national Dem establishment didn't get what it wanted either, namely pilot Steve Filson (Filson's a veteran, and the DCCC is pushing hard to get Dem veterans on ballots across the country). Instead, wind engineer and grassroots favorite Jerry McNerney whomped Filson 53 to 29 percent.

Dem talking heads are sticking with forced cheer about McNerney's chances in the general, but given that he's already lost to Pombo once, and given that voters don't seem all that exercised about Pombo's alleged ethical lapses (much less his environmental lapses), I wouldn't put any money on it.

Blogs

For some reason I missed this New York Magazine article on blogs when it came out, but if you're interested in the medium and the social relationships that shape it, you really should check it out. Most mainstream media articles on blogs sound like they're written by dimwitted, half-ass anthropologists, but this one came from an insider. It's fascinating.