Articles by David Roberts

Adaptation and political context

The U.S. should be doing more to prepare for changes in the climate that are already inevitable. As many folks have pointed out, even if we completely stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow, the gases already in the atmosphere will yield climate weirdness 30 to 40 years from now.

Adaptation -- the term of art for these sorts of adjustments -- is necessary. And it probably doesn't get the attention it should in policy discussions.

Nevertheless, I'm leery about discussing it too much. Why? Because there's more to policy discussions than policy discussions. There's also the political and cultural context in which such discussions take place. Focusing purely on policy details without taking the larger context into account is not a virtue, as some would have it. It's irresponsible.

Kevin Drum recently made this argument with regard to another subject, namely Iran. Should progressives spend more time criticizing Iran's repressive, authoritarian regime? Well ...

Americans and Climate Change: Diffusion of responsibility II

"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.

Yesterday we heard that no organization or institution bears responsibility for taking action on climate change; everyone's waiting for everyone else to act. Today, we hear about some tentative solutions to this problem.

Green building exhibition

What is the Prototype for Advanced Ready-made Amphibious Small-scale Individual Temporary Ecological dwelling (PARASITE)? Find out at "The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture and Design," a nifty exhibition at the National Building Museum. (Except, uh, it ends tomorrow. Sorry about that. Cool website, though.)

The Washington Post has a decent overview.

Can we replace oil and maintain energy supply?

This piece on EnergyBulletin is brilliant, and by that I mean it makes arguments I like to make.

Can we simply switch out oil for other fuels? No: