Articles by David Roberts

Gas price rant

One of the many problems with policy discussions these days is that they tend to be narrow and literal-minded. Take the "problem" of high gas prices. Response? Tax oil companies! Cap prices! Investigate price gouging! Ease environmental restrictions on clean-burning gas!

Stupid. We should take a step back. Here are two relevant facts:

• It's good that gas prices are rising. We want people to buy more fuel-efficient cars and drive less. In the long-term, oil prices are headed up whether we like it or not.
• The hardest hit by high gas prices are the poor, who have the least disposable income and in many cases are stuck in living and work situations that simply don't allow them to drive less in the short-term.

Given that, here are a few policy responses, some local, some federal, just off the top of my head, that make a hell of a lot more sense than whinging about oil companies. In no particular order:

Conference bleg

Over the past month or two, I've gotten approximately 426,088,131 emails and press releases about various conferences and summits and whatnot on the subject of energy and/or peak oil and/or global warming. For instance, I think there's one in New York City soon?

I honestly can't keep track, but I really do want to publicize them, so here's my solution: If you know of a cool conference (or whatnot) happening soon, let me know where and when in comments, and I'll promote it up here. It's called lazy-ass collaborative journalism!

How big money skews the energy debate

One of the most frustrating things about the renewed debate over nuclear power is that it has basically been forced into the public sphere by brute force of cash. The Nuclear Energy Institute can afford to hire high-profile shills; they can blitz the press until they get some prominent placement.

They get to set the terms of the debate. We're stuck arguing "nukes good" or "nukes bad." That makes public acceptance of nukes inevitable, since the "nukes bad" crowd can always be cast as obstructionists standing in the way of progress.

What's missing? A big-money push behind the positive green alternative: Energy efficiency standards, carbon taxes, incentives for clean energy, smarter land-use policy, smarter agricultural policy, etc.

Why is there no big-money push? Because no big, consolidated industry stands to make money off it. Certainly money could be made, but for the short- to mid-term it will be scattered, distributed, small-scale money.

These green strategies serve the public good, not the corporate good, and thus are at a heavy disadvantage in our corporate-dominated political and media system. They have no big-money backing, and thus have no effective advocates.

So the corporate "solutions" dominate the debate.

(The same is true, to some extent, for biofuels. How did ethanol come to serve as a stand-in for energy independence? Because Big Agribusiness and Big Oil both stand to profit, and congressfolk from agricultural states stand to benefit from the rush of subsidies.)

Tim’s big media moment

Our fellow green blogger Tim Haab, from Environmental Economics, was interviewed on NPR today about the dimwitted chain email going around proposing a boycott of Exxon gas. He sounded nervous, but made all the right points.

Don't miss his hilarious account of his Big Media Moment.

So there you have it.  20 years of schooling, 10 years of teaching, 3 pages of meticulous notes (which I never looked at) and my first national radio interview is going to consist of some incoherent rambling and me overenthusiastically yelling "DRIVE LESS." 

Thank God for tenure.  I'm going back to bed.

Don't worry, Tim -- the "drive less" moment redeemed you!