Articles by David Roberts

At least one member of Congress realizes the size of the problem.

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Maryland) gave a series of speeches about peak oil on the floor of the House of Representatives. Mike Millikin of Green Car Congress -- who is, ahem, this week's Grist InterActivist -- discussed them here and here. Now (via Jeff), Global Public Media has an interview with Bartlett. It's absolutely fascinating -- the guy has obviously thought about and studied the issue extensively. It's rare to hear frank talk like this from a public official:

If we're going to get through this crisis period without an awful lot of pain, we're going to have to have the equivalent of a Manhattan-like Project. We're going to have to challenge, not just the American people, but the people of the world because the first thing we have to do is to have an enormously conservation effort so that we buy time. ... Not only do we need to meet the demands of our economies, we need to have a surplus of energy to invest in the renewables, an investment we have got to make. If we just let the clock run down we are going to face a very uncertain future with very traumatic dislocations. We should've started 25 years ago ... Putting it off is going to make it just more and more painful and more expensive.

Yup. Anyway, read the whole thing.

(If this were a Daily Grist story, I would title it "Roscoe Peak Oil Train." Lucky for you it's not.)

Update [2005-5-3 14:21:42 by Dave Roberts]: OMG, and I just noticed this bit. When he's asked what his colleagues' reaction has been to his speeches, he says:

They’d like to know more about it. It’s not something that they even thought about before. Most people have assumed, I have no idea why you would assume that, that oil is forever.

"Most people," perhaps, but the leaders of our country? Truly we are in good hands, no?

Greenpeace co-founder passes away — an appreciation.

Bob Hunter, Canadian journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace, died yesterday of prostate cancer.

Reader Stephen Best forwarded us a nice appreciation of Hunter, written by his friend and fellow rabble-rouser Captain Paul Watson. It's below the fold.

Mother’s Day

The Green life has some tips on eco-friendly Mother's Day Gifts. (Yup, it's this Sunday. Get on it!)

Management guru ponders its weakness.

Business/management guru Tom Peters reads the ongoing series on global warming in the New Yorker and wonders:

Why is an issue that is so grave and so real so poorly understood? Why has the issue of global warming been so poorly marketed? Why is the brand called "The Global Warming Catastrophe" such a weak brand? What can—and should—be done?

Read the comments under his post. It's a pretty revealing snapshot of current attitudes on global warming.

(On an unrelated note, what possible justification can Powers have for having his site -- and presumably his "brand" -- be titled "tompeters!" Did he not get the exclamation-points-are-odious memo?)

(Via Treehugger)