Articles by David Roberts

A conversation with climate journalist Elizabeth Kolbert

Elizabeth Kolbert. Over the past year, a perfect storm of scientific studies, dire weather events, and media coverage lifted global warming onto the mainstream national agenda. No writing had more impact than a series of closely observed pieces in The New Yorker by journalist Elizabeth Kolbert, which have now been collected and expanded into a […]

Bush wants to drop nukes on Iran

This isn't strictly environmental, but everybody who has any audience -- even just family and friends -- should be making sure the news gets out.

The Bush administration is seriously considering -- nay, already planning -- air strikes on Iran, possibly involving nuclear weapons:

Harry Taylor

A gentleman named Harry Taylor became instantly famous when he stood up at one of President Bush's notoriously scripted "town hall" events and said, among other things, this:

You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you’d like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf.

...

... in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate, and ... I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself.

Taylor is also a member of the Sierra Club. According to Carl Pope, Taylor had this to say when asked about the event by club staff:

Cape Wind, R.I.P.

The much-debated Cape Wind project off the coast of Cape Cod has effectively been killed by an amendment to the Coast Guard budget bill.

After all that debate among the locals, it was a parliamentary gimmick in Washington, D.C., that put to rest what would have been the first offshore wind farm in the U.S., and one of the biggest wind farms in the world.

(Amanda wrote about Cape Wind here.)