Articles by David Roberts

Mercury

L.A. Weekly environment writer Judith Lewis has a good piece up regarding the recent Greenpeace-initiated mercury test. It begins like this:

When Greenpeace USA released the interim results of its National Mercury Testing Project last week, two ironies jumped out: One is that the same administration that conferred legal rights on the unborn fetus has so far refused to regulate emissions of a toxin known to damage fetal brains in the womb. The other is that while California's clean-air laws keep coal-fired power plants outside the state's borders, its residents have not escaped coal's toxic effects, which drift to us all the way from China. You might say the tuna have come home to roost.

Al Gore: Coming to a theater near you

An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary about Al Gore's quest to raise the alarm about global warming (covered in Grist here), has been picked up by Paramount and will be distributed worldwide -- it opens in the U.S. on May 26.

Gore and Powerpoint? I smell March of the Penguins numbers here people! (Amusingly, the movie poster actually features penguins -- as opposed to, you know, Al Gore.)

Greens need a vision of the future that they can agree on

Imagine for a moment that you are not an environmentalist. You have basically positive feelings toward environmental protection, but haven't much looked into the specifics. You're vaguely aware that global warming is out there, and it's bad; you're vaguely aware that we import too much oil from the Middle East, and that's bad; you're vaguely aware that Bush is not very good on the environment, and that's bad, though not a big deal compared to, say, terrorism.

Imagine, in short, that you are like most U.S. citizens.

Now, say you hear the State of the Union speech (or see headlines about it the next day). Bush acknowledges that America is addicted to oil and proposes funding for some alternative energy programs. Not huge money, but at least he's addressing the issue. The environmentalists got what they wanted, right? But noooo ... there they are on TV, in the newspapers, denouncing his speech, denouncing his programs, complaining about ethanol, complaining about nuclear, complaining about hydrogen, and on and on.

Obviously nothing will satisfy these people, right? Nothing except halting economic growth completely and turning out all the lights. Shivering in the dark.

Dick, hunting

The internet is chockablock with entertaining coverage of Cheney's hunting mishap -- The Daily Show's segments on the matter deserve some kind of award -- so I won't presume to add to the flurry. For my part, I think James Wolcott's post sums it up pretty well.