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.
All Articles
-
Pollan blogs on corn ethanol and local-food resources
Did you know that foodie writer Michael Pollan (look for my interview on Tuesday!) has a blog? Probably not, because it's hidden behind the cursed NYT Select subscription wall. Too bad -- it's a great blog, and deserves wider readership.
The latest entry reviews arguments against corn ethanol that will be familiar to readers of this blog, and concludes with this:
So why the stampede to make ethanol from corn? Because we have so much of it, and such a powerful lobby promoting its consumption. Ethanol is just the latest chapter in a long, sorry history of clever and profitable schemes to dispose of surplus corn: there was corn liquor in the 19th century; feedlot meat starting in the 1950's and, since 1980, high fructose corn syrup. We grow more than 10 billion bushels of corn a year in this country, far more than we can possibly eat -- though God knows we're doing our best, bingeing on corn-based fast food and high fructose corn syrup till we're fat and diabetic. We probably can't eat much more of the stuff without exploding, so the corn lobby is targeting the next unsuspecting beast that might help chomp through the surplus: your car.
In another entry, he pulls together a list of resources to help people find local, sustainable food. It deserves to be freed from the insidious NYT wall, so here it is:
-
Gore! Gore! You can’t make me stop!
On Wednesday an inconvenient truth was the #11 movie in the country despite being in only 4 theaters, earning $78,994 ($19,749/theater). The #10 movie was showing at 1,265 theaters, earning 117,000, or $92/theater.
Paul Krugman says that substantially reducing greenhouse-gas emissions would do little more than shave a few fractions of a point off our GDP growth, and Matt Yglesias approves.
Krugman also says that Gore's re-emergence is a test of our character ($). "Are we -- by which I mean both the public and the press -- ready for political leaders who don't pander, who are willing to talk about complicated issues and call for responsible policies?"
Eric Boehlert says the national media, at least, is most definitely not ready, and seems geared up to pull the same crap on Gore they pulled on him in 2000.
MediaMatters fact checks Easterbrook's ass. That's gonna leave a mark.
-
Repopulating the Midwest
Brian Depew at The Rural Populist drew my attention to this story about TAB Funkenwerks, an audio-electronics outfit.
They needed a new home for their business. A 30K sq. ft. space in Seattle would have run them, oh, probably $3 million or so. Instead, they bought an abandoned school in Gaylord, Kansas.
Off Ebay.
For $25,000.
-
Dope
Environmentalists are all pot-smoking hippies, right? So I assume this news will be of some interest. Since Ezra stole my "martian" conceit, I'll just steal his whole post:
