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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The powers that be fear renewable energy, as it threatens their mechanisms of control.
There's a point about renewable energy that's been rattling around in my head for a while. Now one of our dear readers has gone and made it in comments, so let me take a whack at it here, drawing on what he said.
Imagine this: A (small-d) democratic, open-source, modular energy grid that accepts and distributes power from any source. Some regions or towns generate power with solar installations, some with wind turbines, some with hydropower, some with tide or wave power, and most with some combination of sources. The energy grid is a piece of federal infrastructure; access to it is a guaranteed public good.
This is, I think, the kind of energy grid most greens would like to see, and the kind they ultimately have in mind when they advocate for clean energy. (The details -- and they are legion -- will have to be hashed out, obviously.)
Now, consider a few characteristics of that system:
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He will oppose renewable targets and climate-change measures.
A story today in the Wall Street Journal (which, sadly, you can't see without a paid subscription), digs into an Office of Management and Budget report on the energy legislation pending before the Senate. Here's the relevant bit:
The OMB said the president will oppose an amendment that would require utilities to produce 10% of their power from solar, wind and other renewable sources by 2020.
The White House budget experts said the administration "is not convinced of the need" for several pending amendments that propose different ways to restrict the nation's industrial output of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases." The president will oppose "any climate change amendments that are inconsistent with the president's climate change strategy," which remains centered on voluntary emissions-reduction efforts, the OMB said.In case you wondered where the White House stood ...
Would Bush veto a bill just because it contained renewable targets or CO2 caps? I doubt it -- he's been begging for an energy bill for years, and scuttling it in such a transparent sop to his fossil-contributors would be politically ugly.
But we'll likely never find out. If anything sinks the bill, it will be the MTBE liability shield that the House (read: Tom Delay) is so hot for.
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10 steps on global warming
Before I forget yet again (I'm the last guy on the blogospheric block to get to it): the Union of Concerned Scientists' Ten Steps to Reduce Your Global Warming Impact.
