Articles by David Roberts

An ecological guide thereto.

Via Nick, a simple and useful ecological guide to paper. Don't be the last kid on your block to learn the difference between PCF and ECF!

It contains great insight on the alignment of policital forces and the future of the green movement.

There has been much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth among environmentalists since the election, and even more so since the debut of that godforsaken paper.

Much of it assumes that "the movement" -- to the extent there is such a discrete thing -- is responsible for its own ill fortunes. I don't want to say that's entirely untrue, but I think greens, like perhaps everyone, tend to exaggerate the degree to which they control their own fate. There are large historical forces afoot, and to some extent environmentalism is simply carried along.

Consider that, to use that most hackneyed of analytical crutches, 9/11 changed everything. Well it didn't change everything, but it prompted a pretty significant realignment of the concerns and allegiances of a pretty significant portion of the voting public. In particular, the public mood turned very aggressive about foreign policy, and aligned with the party that displayed the most bellicosity on that subject: Republican.

It so happens that, at least presently, those running the Republican Party are fairly hostile to environmental regulation and indifferent toward environmental concerns (yes, of course there are exceptions, but let's not pretend, okay?).

So, there's been no particular shift away from environmental concern in the electorate. It's just that kicking some ass (anybody's ass will do) took precedence. So much the worse for the environment, but I'm not sure the green movement can be fairly blamed for it.

Support for this view can be found in the massive recent Pew poll. Consider this:

Clean energy tech is not frozen in time.

So, I'm listening to a show on KUOW about peak oil, and you know what bugs me? I'll tell you.

You often hear a single person make the following two claims:

• Clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar "just aren't developed enough" now to meet our energy needs. Just not dense enough in their energy output. Take up too much darn space. "Maybe someday," they say wistfully, "but not today."
• Although we're running out of conventional sources of oil, magical new technologies and methods will allow us to extract oil economically from deep water, tar sands, shale, the moon, god knows what. "Never underestimate human ingenuity," they cry, "technology shall save us!"

In other words, the argument against moving from oil to clean energy depends on discussing renewable energy technologies as though they are frozen in time, while at the same time painting a picture of a Jetsons-esque future for oil extraction technologies.

Me, I love technology, and I have great faith in human ingenuity. But if brainpower and billions of dollars of investment can transform oil extraction technologies, why can't they make clean energy technologies orders of magnitude smaller, more efficient, and easier to use?

Keep an eye out for this slight of hand. If current oil technology and current clean energy technology go head to head (and environmental consequences are taken into account), clean energy technology wins. If they go head to head based on the assumption of brilliant new technological advances, clean energy technology wins.

Clean energy technology wins.

They’re going to stay secret.

Carl Pope has more to say about the grim news today that a federal appeals court ruled -- against the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch -- that Cheney can keep the participants and deliberations of his 2001 energy task force secret. This was a real blow. Says Pope:

The whole saga has been sordid, from the secretive operation of the Task Force, in which Enron enjoyed preferential access, Peabody Coal was enabled to time a public stock offering at a highly advantageous moment, huge public subsidies were granted to favored insiders, Judge Scalia went hunting with the vice-president while considering his case and ultimately awarding him the victory that prevented the public from seeing what happened before the election, to this final decision today.

We may never know the details of what happened -- but we certainly know now that keeping those details secret was worth a great deal to the vice-president and probably worth even more to his campaign contributors.