Articles by David Roberts

Salon on climate change

Salon has a mini-package of stories today on climate change.

The first thing that drew my eye was "Play Paul Revere," which promised "five simple ways individuals can fight global warming." I braced myself for the insipid boilerplate "change a light bulb!" chipperness. But to my immense surprise and gratification, three of the five have to do with engaging your community and your culture. Vote. Donate your time and money. And talk about it with people you know.

Official Gristmill Kudos to author Tracy Clark-Flory for keeping it real.

Also of interest, Katharine Mieszkowski takes a long, careful look at carbon offsets:

Military focuses on energy

Over at the DefenseTech blog, Noah Shachtman muses on the military's need to wean itself off oil, reacting to comments by Jim Woolsey (PDF).

Among other things, he flags the new issue of Defense Technology International (interesting website, though horrendous usability-wise), which is titled "The Military and the End of Oil." It's got pieces on hybrid diesel-electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells, solid-waste lasers (?!), and the DoD's new strategic approach to energy and conservation. Interesting stuff.

It's a little depressing to contemplate, but I suspect that 50 years from now we'll look back and realize that, as with so many previous technologies, it was military application that really accelerated clean tech deployment.

(ht: reader JH)

Update [2006-5-26 12:31:29 by David Roberts]: Ah, I see there's related news over on CleanTechBlog, mainly about the shift to hydrogen.

South Central Community Farm update

If you haven't been keeping up: The situation at the South Central Community Farm has gotten even more grim. The farmers have received an eviction order. A variety of celebs and quasi-celebs and hippie ex-celebs have taken up direct action, camping out on the farm. Julia Butterfly Hill is even sitting up in a tree. It's not looking good.

Go give them some money.

(Meanwhile, the same city that can't cough up $10 million for this community farm is contemplating spending $800 million renovating a sports stadium to attract an NFL team. Awesome.)

Americans and Climate Change: Incentives

"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.

All right, I realize that nobody is reading this, but dammit, I started posting it and I'm going to finish. It's a shame, really -- this is one of the most interesting chapters. It looks at a variety of professions -- scientists, journalists, educators, politicians, businessfolk, and environmentalists -- and examines the kind of career incentives that discourage active engagement on climate change. It's quite eye-opening. Today I'll just post the intro (super-short!).