Articles by David Roberts

Good, if hopeless, ideas on how to rebuild N.O.

It sure would be nice if New Orleans were rebuilt according to the principles of sustainability, wouldn't it? In a way that puts it in balance with nature? A way that's more equitable for the poor and disadvantaged? A way that could serve as an example of state-of-the-art urban design?

... wait for it ...

And a pony!

Back in the real world, the same people who ran the "reconstruction" of Iraq are running this gig. Literally: several of the officials who worked in Iraq are being hired by the companies contracted to work in N.O. Money is flooding in, accountability and transparency are completely absent, and the forces of good are being caught flat-footed. Expect travesty.

But still, we can dream. If we did have a responsible, imaginative government, what would the rebuilding process look like? Turns out the editors of Environmental Building News have a fantastic piece about just this subject. Read the whole thing -- seriously -- but here are the 10 steps they lay out:

Burning in New Orleans

Don't miss Carl Pope on the decidedly brown clean-up techniques being used by the recipients of the no-bid contracts for New Orleans remediation. In particular: they're burning the debris, which is likely loaded with toxic chemicals.

This, of course is the same reckless approach to cleaning up after a disaster that the Bush administration adopted in its official disaster response plans for another terrorist attack after 9/11. A Sierra Club analysis discovered that the Administration had decided that in another terrorist attack it would "waive" cleanup standards otherwise required under federal law, and that devastated communities would be left contaminated forever. We protested at the time that it seemed clinically insane to say that, if terrorists attacked a community, it would not get the same kind of protection and cleanup that would follow a natural disaster. Now it turns out that we hadn't heard the sound of the second shoe dropping. The response to Katrina shows that our government has no intention of protecting communities after they suffer any disaster, whether natural or terrorist.

How many kudos does Bush deserve for endorsing conservation?

George W. Bush recently endorsed energy conservation. How much credit does he deserve?

The other post-Katrina recommendations featured in yesterday's press conference include trimming back environmental regulation on oil refineries, giving the feds siting authority over said refineries, and trimming money from Medicare, Medicaid, and the food-stamp program to pay for hurricane cleanup. No military or homeland-security programs will be touched, nor will there be any pause in the serial tax cuts for the rich.

Oh, and in the event of an avian flu outbreak, U.S. military grunts may be used as quarantine-enforcing first responders. Throw ya hands up for the Posse Comitatus Act! No, seriously. Put your hands up.

How much credit? Not so much.

Small-scale microgrids are more efficient, cheaper, and work just as well

If I were the kind of person who really dug in and learned about subjects in depth instead of a quasi-pundit dilettante who knows just enough about a lot of subjects to be dangerous [takes breath] I would study distributed electrical grids. They are, after all, the new black.

Here's the take-home message: Smaller-scale, distributed electrical generation (solar, wind, etc.), built closer to consumers, run by intelligent grids, is cheaper and more efficient than the big, centralized kind, could be implemented with no loss of quality or service, and would sharply reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. It is, as Martha is wont to say, a good thing. The impediments are not only technical but political, since distributed electrical grids are by nature democratizing.

More below the fold.