Articles by David Roberts

Rebuilding: do it right

Two good things on rebuilding:

Leo DiCaprio (heard of him?) and (ex-InterActivist) Matt Petersen give a brief but pungent rundown on what went wrong in New Orleans and how it could be made right. I wonder which part Leo wrote.

(Oh, and no offense, Leo, but the consensus in the office is that Jake Gyllenhaal is the eco-hottie du jour.)

Van Jones has a similar piece in Yes! Magazine, calling for social justice and environmental principles to govern the rebuilding process. Apparently a longer version will run in the Oct. print issue.

Green humor

As I believe I've mentioned, environmentalism is never funny.

Environmentalists, however, are the source of endless amusement. To wit: here's a set of jokes that's been making the eco-rounds:

DDT myths

You may not have noticed, but the Right is fairly obsessed with propagating the notion that environmentalists, by getting DDT banned in 1972, are responsible for the deaths of millions of poor in the developing world. This is the kind of thing that people with, um, lives tend to ignore. It travels around underground on right wing sites until it slowly seeps into conventional wisdom.

It's bullsnot, though. For a brief primer on why, see Tim Lambert.

Gore says he won’t run

And adds this:

"My country is extremely attentive to the slightest increase in a risk from terror, and that's appropriate," he said. "But why should we be so tolerant of risk where the future habitability of our planet is concerned?"

Sigh.