Articles by David Roberts

Moyers and humility

In his extraordinarily humane baccalaureate address to Hamilton College, journalist Bill Moyers raises all the looming catastrophes -- peak oil, global warming, etc. And raises all the reasons for hope. And then admits that he has no $%@! idea what's going to happen.

I think all of us -- particularly, ahem, the bloggers among us -- could learn from this kind of humility:

Gore = Goebbels?

Jesus. The slime campaign against Gore is escalating even faster than I expected.

ThinkProgress -- which must have 500 interns watching every news channel and reading every publication -- brings news of the latest:

Sterling Burnett is a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, an organization that has received over $390,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. This afternoon on Fox, Burnett compared watching Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, to watching a movie by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels to learn about Nazi Germany. Watch it.

Yowza.

Forget about litter. Forget about recycling. Get political.

Numerous times on this blog, I've argued that while individual behavior is not irrelevant, it certainly shouldn't be the focus of environmental advocacy. Individuals are highly constrained in their choices; substantial environmental improvement will only happen with structural changes in our laws, regulations, and business practices.

Brad Plumer makes a similar point today, drawing from Heather Rogers' Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage:

Scientists predict bad hurricanes; Robertson predicts worse

In Daily Grist today, we report that scientists are predicting another grim hurricane season -- and may even create a Category 6 for the super-intense storms of the future.

If you think that's scary, wait 'til you see what Pat Robertson says is in store!

Repent, ye Northwesterners!

Under the fold is another local-news video from YouTube, which has nothing to do with the environment but may be the single funniest thing I've ever seen.