Articles by David Roberts

Good news and bad

A day late, but never a dollar short: Mike's week in review.

What’s your secret eco-sin?

Environmentalists have a reputation for being self-righteous, holier-than-thou prigs. And yeah, well, they frequently are. So in the spirit of humanizing and soul cleansing and all that, we've asked a few greens, including writers Bill McKibben and Terry Tempest Williams, to confess their environmental sins. And we're asking you to do the same!

Leave your deepest, darkest environmental sins in comments. We promise, you'll feel better afterward.

Two great tastes that taste great together

Alan AtKisson pleads with us to give him one little favor: If money put into sustainability is returned 3, or 10, or 50 times over in savings, let's think of it as an investment, not a cost.

Because the world is now brimming with proof that very many expenditures to keep our environment cleaner, help prevent climate change, and otherwise save our hides (as well as the hides of other creatures) are also profitable. Very profitable indeed.

Here I imagine a "bwah-ha-ha-ha!" But in a good way.

He gets taken to task in comments for more or less disregarding the meaning of the technical accounting term "cost," but I think commenter David Foley has it right: That's not really the point. The point is we need to convince the contemporary mind that sustainability pays. Don't let it pass by when folks say otherwise.

I keep enjoying things Alan puts up on Worldchanging, like this and this and especially this, which I've been meaning to post on since it went up a month ago. Since that just keeps receding down my to-do list, for now I'll just say:

Mother Jones runs a package on global warming

Don't miss the current issue of Mother Jones, with a feature package called "As the World Burns" about, as you might surmise, global warming. Here's a chunk of the Editor's Note (which is worth reading in its entirety):

In his article "Some Like It Hot" (page 36), Chris Mooney pinpoints a critical distinction in the battle over global warming. The think tanks, crank scientists, and pseudo-journalists who dispute climate change with the aid of millions of corporate dollars are not just arguing the economics of the problem, as they sometimes pretend. That activity, engaging in a thoughtful discussion of politics and priorities, the wisdom of one or another course of action, could be considered honorable regardless of which side one argued from. Rather, the mouthpieces are ignobly contesting the very science itself, using any tactic, any slipshod fiction, that might throw doubt into the public mind and so deflect the dictates of hard fact. In other words, given a public policy debate, conservatives have decided to forgo real debate entirely -- to adopt instead a radical course: denying reality itself.

Mooney's article and its companion pieces on the global warming wars, by Bill McKibben and Ross Gelbspan, appear under the banner "Climate of Denial."

I haven't read all this stuff yet. I'll probably have more to say when I do. But check it out your own self.