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.

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  • CAFTA at midnight

    Speaking of DeLay scumbaggery, it looks like the Republicans are going to hold a vote on CAFTA between midnight and 2am tonight. They're hoping that some of the moderate Republicans who oppose this legislative turd will stay home and that DeLay and his posse can bully the rest into supporting it.

    You think this is how a majority behaves when it's proud of its legislation?

    Jeff has a nice round-up of sources on why CAFTA is no good for the environment. It's also no good for free trade, or anything else really. The substantive stakes are not huge, but it's a great example of the bankrupt process by which the Republican majority passes legislation these days.

    Update [2005-7-27 22:34:9 by Dave Roberts]: It just passed -- never mind arm-twisting moderate Republicans. Fifteen Democrats voted for this hunk of junk, and that put it over the top. The D.C. rot is bipartisan.

    (See also Ezra.)

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  • Delay sneaks $1.5 billion in direct subsidies to oil and gas companies in energy bill, after confere

    Rep. Tom DeLay just inserted a $1.5 billion chunk of pork into the energy bill. For what, you ask? The oil and gas industry.

    Worse, he snuck it in after the bill had left conference committee, so committee members had no chance to consider (or reject) it.

    An enormous direct subsidy from taxpayers to one of the most profitable industries in the world, implemented in total contravention of the democratic process, by a Representative whose district stands directly to benefit. The mind really does boggle.

    Rep. Henry Waxman just sent a letter (PDF) of complaint to Rep. Dennis Hastert. Some excerpts:

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  • Their dependence on gaz guzzlers makes them highly vulnerable, says a new study

    Ah, now we're talking. Earlier this week I was a bit snarky about this article, which flung broad statements about with very little empirical support (understandable, I guess, for a breezy op-ed).

    But a new study that just came across my desk puts some teeth in the argument that going green is smart business strategy for automakers.

    Jointly published by the U. of Michigan and NRDC, the study analyzes what would happen to the Big Three U.S. automakers in the event of an oil-price spike.

    As I've mentioned before, the possibility of such a spike is not remote. With supply and demand in such tight and tenuous balance, anything -- domestic politics, terrorist attacks, accidents, you name it -- could cause major disruptions in the oil market. How would American companies weather such a storm? From the NRDC press release:

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  • A really depressing paper about climate change.

    A few days ago Roger Pielke Jr. pointed to a paper (PDF) by Tim Dyson of the London School of Economics called "On development, demography and climate change: The end of the world as we know it?" Pielke called it "refreshingly clear thinking on climate change." That's true, if by "refreshingly clear" he means "weep-silently-aplogize-to-your-children-and-throw-yourself-out-a-window depressing." Abandon hope, all ye who download PDF here.

    Dyson's argument unfolds in several stages, but the brutal conclusion is simple: "In all likelihood, events are now set to run their course."

    Here are the five main points made, quoted directly from the abstract:

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