Articles by David Roberts

Libertarian dialogue seems oddly beside the (moral) point

I've been meaning to comment on Jonathan H. Adler's admirable efforts to start a dialogue with his right-leaning colleagues on the implications of climate change for property rights activists. (The capsule summary: Rich countries may be morally obliged to compensate folks in developing countries for the damage to their property caused by climate change.) Adler introduces the topic here, and the full dialogue at the Property and Environment Research Center is here.

Now Adler has run a response from the Sierra Club's Carl Pope, that he responds to in turn.

I don't have much of value to add to the dialogue. I find myself vaguely bewildered watching someone attempt to build a "normative case" for "direct investments addressing causes of mortality in these countries -- disease, unsafe drinking water, lack of sanitation, lack of infrastructure, etc."

I do think there's a self-interested, libertarian case to be made. Doing so would no doubt be a diverting intellectual exercise.

But that sort of quasi-Vulcan theorizing would just circle around to a moral principle that should be manifestly evident and require no such support: Where one finds widespread suffering, one ought to act to ameliorate it.

ABC News’ John Stossel says dumb stuff about global warming, gets b-slapped

ABC News hack John Stossel writes a dumb column praising Michael Crichton's State of Fear. MediaMatters gives it a well-deserved spanking. Stossel responds with an even dumber column accusing his critics of "smearing" him and being part of the dread "Left." MediaMatters responds with an even-more-decisive beatdown.

Gristmill author savors.

(Via Chris Mooney)

All my life I’ve waited to use that headline.

As we noted in yesterday's Daily Grist, Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.) had threatened to put a hold on the confirmation of Stephen Johnson as head of the EPA. Carper is pissed about the Bushies' refusal to study two alternatives to their "Clear Skies" legislation.

Well, today he's gone and done it. "Carper said he would not lift the hold until the EPA gave him an 'ironclad' guarantee it would evaluate the other plans."

Stay tuned.

Corporations need to be encouraged when they embrace environmental talk, not bashed

After all the hugging and smooching of big corporations on Gristmill today, I thought I'd try to recapture our righteous insurgent credibility by linking to some primo corporation bashing, in the form of GreenLife's just-released list of America's Ten Worst Greenwashers.

But after reading it, I'm afraid I just can't sign on. I may have to go back to being a Running Dog Whore for The Man.

I felt a sense of disquiet as I read through the list, and the reason why is captured perfectly in the "notes on methodology":