Articles by David Roberts

What’s the Arctic Refuge worth to you?

In my experience, environmentalists are ... uh, how to put this delicately ... not very politically pragmatic. So, here's a thought experiment.

Imagine that, for whatever reason, the Republicans' current effort to drill in the Arctic Refuge was defeated, and the Refuge was taken off the table.

Now imagine, further, that Bush and the Republicans approached the major environmental organizations and their backers in Congress and offered a deal. They said, for instance, "if you let us get drills into ANWR, we'll sign onto Kyoto."

Would you do it?

What would you take in exchange for drilling in the Refuge? Click "read more" and vote in the poll.

Kristof’s blog

Did you know that Nicholas Kristof has a blog? As far as I can tell he's the only NYT columnist with one (hosted on the NYT site, anyway). It's a neat idea, though rather clunky and difficult to navigate in practice. The idea is that he can use this quasi-blog to interact with readers, but it mostly seems to involve just printing reader letters.

Regardless, go here and scroll down to the bottom two posts, which consist of letters on his execrable column on environmentalism. Most take him to task, justly. He does not respond.

How’s your air?

Via MetaEfficient, check out Scorecard, the Pollution Information Site. You can type in your zip code and find out the air quality (and much more pollution data) where you live, including a map of pollution sources and comparisons to national averages. Very handy. Oh, and scary.

Here's the pollution situation where I live. The top polluter in my county is Rexam Beverage Can Co. The top chemical pollutants are glycol ethers. We've got two Superfund sites polluting our water.

How's your home turf doing?

Clean-Energy Trends 2005

I'm way behind in my blogginess, thanks to that other full-time job I have, so forgive me as I catch up on stuff that's (gasp!) up to two days old.

Check out the report from Joel Makower and Clean Edge on "Clean-Energy Trends 2005" (PDF). Says Joel:

It offers ten-year projections for key clean-energy markets, examines factors that are influencing clean-energy markets and venture investments, and offers five trends we find noteworthy.

Here are the five trends:

• the growth of fuels from biomass in the U.S. and Europe
• the growth of energy efficiency due to high energy prices
• the resurgence of electricity generated by concentrated solar power stations
• the emergence of the hydrogen infrastructure
• how the growth of green buildings is stimulating markets for new products and technologies

Joel's got more.