Articles by David Roberts

Marketing clean energy

Here's a very brief but quite interesting interview with Elise Soukup from the clean-energy marketing nonprofit SmartPower.

Theory in practice

I'm still pondering a reply to Jerry Taylor's thoughtful comment -- seems like it requires something substantive, and I never have time for substance. Sigh.

But let me just throw out one quick observation.

Energy bill update

Looks like the energy bill is headed for passage. Ezra Klein sums it up:

Save for substantive modernization of our electricity grid, an increase in CAFE standards, an actual stance on global warming, a coherent framework for reducing our oil consumption, a serious investment in natural gas, an actual interest in new technologies for alternative sources, and really anything that'd have any sort of worthwhile impact on our energy situation at all, this bill has is just what we need. Subsidies. Giveaways. Handouts. Protection. Guidelines. Bureaucracy. All sprinkled with liberal amounts of Corporate Love and put on the Senate's desk.

...

This isn't conservatism. And it's only sold as progressivism. In reality, it's modern Republicanism distilled, a perfectly pure mixture of incoherence and corruption publicly aimed at solving a serious problem but privately written to ignore the issue in favor of industry demands.

Cultural biases precede empirical facts; greens should fashion strategy accordingly.

Since risk and the perception of risk seem to be the topics of the day, let me point you to an interesting and provocative hypothesis on those same subjects.

Brad Plumer refers us to an intriguing paper by social scientists Dan Kahan and Donald Braman of Yale called "Cultural Cognition and Public Policy." The authors make use of the cultural theory of risk to argue that differences in public opinion arise not from incomplete science or inadequate education, but from "cultural cognition":