Articles by David Roberts
David Roberts was a staff writer for Grist. You can follow him on Twitter, if you're into that sort of thing.
All Articles
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Top 25 green power purchasers
Let me officially become the very last green blogger on the planet to draw attention to the EPA's Top 25 Partners in the Green Power Partnership, "whose annual green power purchase is the largest, and whose green power purchase has been completed."
No. 1? The U.S. Air Force.
Interestingly, Whole Foods' recent moves have vaulted it to No. 2. Too bad its food costs so damn much. (But man, I've never had turkey/white bean chili like that before or since ...)
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Tilting at Pombo
Alternet has a story about green attempts to unseat Rep. Richard "Dick" Pombo (R-Calif.) that is substantially a retread of Amanda's story from a few weeks ago. There's a lot of hand-waving, but no good, practical answer to the main question, to wit: What chance in hell do these efforts have in succeeding? Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised come 2006, but from everything I've seen my own answer remains: a snowball's.
(via Sustainablog)
Oh, and I forgot, Carl Pope also blogged about this, quoting a political scientist saying, "Personally, I'd look at anything less than a two-to-one win (by Pombo) as a clear signal." That's one way of defining victory, I guess.
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L.A. Times: EPA Follies
On Saturday the L.A. Times ran a series of editorials collectively titled "EPA Follies":
- "A wrong-way agency" -- a general critique.
- "Sticking up for health" -- lauding the EPA for cracking down on teflon.
- "Good, clean information" -- bashing the agency for proposing to weakened the Toxics Release Inventory.
All short, all worth a read.
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A award-deserving series of stories on the effects of small temperature differences
While I'm noting journalists worth their salt, how about a shout out for the San Francisco Chronicle's Jane Kay? A couple weeks ago she wrote a superb series on global warming, under the rubric "A Warming World: The Difference a Degree Makes." I should have noted it then, but let me remedy that:
- "Polar Warning," about the declining fate of polar bears;
- "Seashore Sea Change," about the web of effects brought about by a three-degree rise in the temperature of California coastal waters;
- "Survival of a Reef," about the slow death of the Cabo Pulmo coral reef in the Gulf of California, and its effect on one Mexican family;
- a fantastic audio slide show in three parts -- one, two, three.
It was all good, but I think my favorite was the second. The next time a friend asks what the big deal is about a few degrees difference in the global temperature, point them here:
