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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Me, talking politics and oil subsidies [VIDEO]
Yesterday, I was on The Alyona Show, a sharp public affairs talk show run, oddly enough, by Russia Today. The topic was the politics around oil subsidies. Here’s the clip: I don’t have a ton to add, but here’s one point I was pondering on the bus this morning. You often hear people (like me!) […]
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Prof. Socolow’s bizarre climate comments and the pessimism of Serious People
The blogosphere is all abuzz about recent comments from Princeton professor Robert Socolow, who along with fellow scholar Stephen Pacala developed the famous “wedges” approach to tackling climate change. (A wedge of nuclear, a wedge of solar, a wedge of efficiency, etc., and slowly you get that emissions curve down. That’s the basic idea anyway.) […]
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Obama’s oil plan shows he still doesn’t get post-truth politics
In his weekly address, Obama once again promoted an energy plan that centrally involves increased domestic drilling for oil and gas. You can read the ugly details at The New York Times or Politico. Here’s the political thinking that informs this move: Gas prices are rising and people are angry. Republicans and conservative Dems are […]
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Are climate campaigners doing it wrong? I review a book that answers ‘yes’
What if the problem with international climate negotiations is not this or that recalcitrant country but the very foundation the whole enterprise is built on? What if climate campaigners are fixated on a set of frames and strategies that are doomed to failure? Wouldn’t that suck? Yes. Yes it would suck. Nonetheless, that’s the situation […]
