Articles by David Roberts

Radiohead singer called out for hypocrisy.

Thom Yorke, leader of the critically-revered rock band Radiohead, has this to say:

"Climate change is indisputable and we have to do something dramatic. You have a certain amount of credit you can cash in with your celebrity and I'm cashing the rest of my chips in with this. ... The music industry is a spectacularly good example of fast-turnover consumer culture. It is actually terrifying. Environmental considerations should be factored in to the way the record companies operate."

Well, the Sunday Times went and hired the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management to do an environmental audit of the band.

It found that 50,000 trees would need to be planted and maintained for 100 years in order to offset the amount of CO2 produced by Hail to the Thief, the group's last album and tour.

These figures, said the Times with poorly concealed condescension, "highlight the complexity of seemingly simple arguments on protecting the planet."

NextBillion goodies

Like everyone else in the sustainable blogosphere, I've been digging on NextBillion.net, the newly launched blog from the World Resources Institute. They sent me to Fast Company's "Change Masters" awards for businesses that do good, which are cool. Then there's this great post on the three steps the business world can take to lead globalization on a more sustainable path.

Best of all, there's this op-ed by Ian Davis in The Economist (cited here) about the silly conflict between two contrasting points of view: corporate social responsibility (CSR) on one hand, and "the business of business is business" -- a mindset that rejects all social concerns as extraneous -- on the other.

Davis argues that both perspectives are limited and slightly naive, and lays out a path to a more integrated perspective through which activists recognize the social goods proffered by business, and businesses recognize the crucial ways that social concerns are already integral to their financial well-being.

I can't do it justice in this hasty post, but do give it a read. It's enlightening.

Arctic Refuge documentary is beautifully made, but ultimately a tad too restrained for its own good.

U.N. World Environment Day is being held in San Francisco this year, from June 1-5. The associated Green Screen Environmental Film Festival kicks off on June 1 with Oil on Ice, the award-winning documentary on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by co-directors Bo Boudart and Dale Djerassi.

Oil on Ice is a handsome film, impeccably made. Virtually every frame contains an image of beauty: One goal at which it unquestionably succeeds is to refute the obscene contention by certain Alaska politicians (who shall remain unnamed) that the Refuge is nothing but a snow-seared wasteland. It also sparks a strangely wistful sense of wonder that the U.S. still contains an untouched swath of territory, as one commentator puts it, "just for the animals." That is, when you think about it, quite a remarkable thing in this day and age. Once surrendered, it can never be recovered.

The film is a slim 40 minutes long, and it attempts to cover a great deal of territory. It indicts the oil industry for the damage done elsewhere in Alaska, particularly the Exxon-Valdez spill; it visits indigenous Alaskan communities and illustrates their fragile relationship to wildlife migratory and spawning patterns that could be warped by new oil development; it celebrates the variety of wildlife that exists year-round in the Refuge, and in particular the dazzling explosion of life that descends on the North Shore during the four-month warm season; and it investigates the politics of oil, showing how powerful oil service companies and Alaskan politicians are driving the debate, obscuring the fact that changes in auto technology could preserve far more oil than could be pulled from the Refuge.

Within its time constraints, none of these arguments can be made decisively, but their accumulation is ultimately persuasive.

None of it will be new to those who have been following the issue, though some factoids may surprise. What Oil on Ice does is present the various facets in compact, digestible, gorgeous form. The website also contain volumes of background information and resources for further action -- in particular note the short introductory film, notification on upcoming screenings, and of course, a place to buy the DVD.

It's an all-around laudable undertaking and deserves wide exposure.

My one complaint is about tone:

Inhofe v. Mooney

Chris Mooney has had a great deal of fun bashing Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) for his flat-earthism on climate change and his general antipathy toward environmental causes.

Now Chris has experienced the great honor of having his work directly cited -- though his name was changed to "alarmist writer" -- by the senator on the Senate floor. (Unsurprisingly, Inhofe takes passages out of context, distorts the plain meaning of words, and otherwise misrepresents the work.)

Congrats, Chris, you've hit the bigtime!