Articles by David Roberts

From Beauty to Burgers

Miss environmentality The newly crowned Miss Rhode Island has taped up her boobies, Vaselined her teeth, and strutted her stuff in a swimsuit and heels — all in the service of fighting global warming. The tiara’d staffer for the Harvard Green Campus Initiative says it’s all part of her plan to push the issue in […]

What we can learn from anti-smoking advocates

Jamais Cascio -- late of Worldchanging, now ensconced in a snug new blog home -- has an intriguing post up arguing that there are parallels between the climate-crisis debate and the smoking debate of yore, and furthermore that those pushing the climate-crisis issue have much to learn from anti-smoking advocates.

I think he's right on both counts. But I also think he's being rather optimistic about both the parallels and the lessons. Consider this:

Climate crisis and the 2008 election

Wesley Clark is talking about global warming the climate crisis. I'm really curious to see how the issue plays out as candidates start jockeying, looking ahead to 2008.

Everyone on the Dem side will need to acknowledge it, of course, but I wonder which ones will really grab it and try to make it a signature issue. Most of all I want to see what Hillary Clinton, the front-runner [weeps silently], will say about it. I predict a tepid brew.

And of course the calculus on the Republican side is more complex. There's still enormous skepticism about it in the base, and there's the omni-present corporate lobby to please. But public pressure is building and it's becoming increasingly embarrassing to be an outright denier. So candidates on the R side will be probing and experimenting, looking for just the right balance of pander, misdirection, and earnest expression of concern.

Should be fun to watch.

(via EnergyBulletin)

Against hope

Derrick Jensen weighs in on the ongoing proper-level-of-hope debate with a bold anti-hope argument.