Articles by David Roberts

Renew US: Climate crisis averted … at least in the movie

Ah, finally a Flash movie I can get behind!

Renew US is ...

... a collaborative effort launched by Stonyfield Farm, Inc., a consumer products company founded in 1983 with the belief that the planet is everybody's business; Earth Day Network, an international environmental network dedicated since 1970 to empowering people to effect large scale positive environmental change, and Clean Air-Cool Planet, a nonprofit organization that educates industry, consumers and policy makers about the challenges and solutions to global climate change.

To mark its debut, the site is running a Flash movie called "Climate: A Crisis Averted." The premise is that it's filmed in 2055, after the threat of global warming has been overcome. Various people ruminate on how grim the situation was in 2006, and how everyone came together to act (thanks, ahem, to Renew US).

After you watch the movie, go here to learn how to buy clean power in your area.

Hope! Solutions! And clever, too. Let me know what you think.

(Small kvetch under the fold.)

Well this is a new one

Steve Forbes has a creative strategy for bringing down the price of oil: Attack Iran.

The ghost of Ayn Rand reminds us that environmentalists want to KILL US ALL [cue music from Psycho]

We received this op-ed submission from the Ayn Rand Institute, for reasons I don't fully understand. Perhaps they didn't read the site too closely?

I dabbled with Rand when I was a bitter adolescent ... which is the appropriate time to dabble with Rand. When you don't grow out of that phase, well, you go to work for the Institute.

Anyway, I present, for your amusement and edification:

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To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress, and human life.
By Michael S. Berliner

Earth Day approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The danger is not from acid rain, global warming, smog, or the logging of rain forests, as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger to mankind is from environmentalism.

Coal: Totally, like, awesome

Advertisers and marketing types everywhere want to know: What common interest unites pre-teen African Americans and young white skateboarders?

Well, I've found the answer! It's American coal, which is abundant, affordable, and oh-so-clean! Why, it's so darn cool the skateboarder is "stoked" about it.

Learn more here.

(And PS, is that the kid from The Squid and the Whale?)