Articles by David Roberts

Dept. of irony

This is hilarious. Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Tex.) is holding a fundraiser for beleaguered ex-House Speaker Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). Where, you ask?

The Petroleum Club.

Poetry.

From Cracking Up to Cream Pie

Gloom and doom with a sense of … hey, wait a minute Some Grumpy Grumpersteins out there think environmentalism is never funny. TBS aims to prove ’em wrong with Earth to America! — an exclamation-pointed, star-studded night of comedy about the planet’s plight. That bit on new-source review is gonna kill. Turning Japanese, we really […]

Civil servants quit or get canned for bucking bad environmental policy

In Nick Turse's astonishing list of Bush administration casualties -- civil servants who have quit or been fired for bucking administration policy -- are numerous entries of interest to greens. Here are a few:

Poll: everyone supports us but no one really cares

All the sustainable bloggy folk are reporting on a new poll in the Wall Street Journal.

On the bright side, "nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults agree that protecting the environment is important and standards cannot be too high."

Then again, "Only 12% of U.S. adults describe themselves as active environmentalists."

There's a lot to be unpacked in this, but I gotta skeedaddle home. Read the whole thing. I'll just say: greens are rather obsessed with the idea that if they just get the facts out there, people will want action. (This is particularly true on global warming.)

But the facts are already out there. People already want action. But there's a difference between wanting action in the "I'd say so on a poll" way and wanting action on the "I'd make it a voting priority" way.

We don't need more facts and studies and "proof." We need to figure out how to motivate people. Those are separate undertakings, and it's the latter greens are failing at.