Articles by David Roberts

Whole Foods

Readers who found our interview with John Mackey, founder and CEO of Whole Foods, interesting, may also be interested in this Forbes story on Whole Foods, which focuses on the "food-as-porn" marketing and business strategy of the growing (mostly) organic giant.

(Via Green Life)

Forget about CO2 for a minute already

It's a dirty secret in the blog world that occasionally bloggers will recommend that their readers read something that they themselves have not read. (Gasp.) But not this blog! At least, not any more! Or rather, at least not this time!

Yesterday I was going to recommend "Bringing Society Back into the Climate Debate" (PDF), a new paper by Roger Pielke Jr. and Daniel Sarewitz (found via their excellent Prometheus science blog). But then I realized that it's a PDF, it's wonky, it's written in dry academic language, and y'all would never read it. And really, how could I expect you to if I hadn't? So last night, I read it.

My initial reaction: They make an extremely good point. Enviros need to reconsider their monomaniacal focus on cutting CO2 emissions.

Go beneath the fold for a brief summary.

Might as well jump

To a single individual, a problem like global warming can seem vast and hopeless. One thing we constantly hear from readers is, "What can I do?"

Well, now you have an answer: Jump. The folks at World Jump Day are trying to sign up 600,000,000 people in the Western hemisphere to jump simultaneously on July 20, 2006, at 7:39:13 PM (Pacific time -- you can find your local time on their website).

Why? Well, according to German researcher Hans Niesward and his colleagues at the Department of Gravitationsphysik at ISA/München, if 600 million people jump all at once, the earth could be bumped into a slightly new orbit. The result: Longer daytime hours, a more habitable average global temperature (particularly helpful to developing countries around the equator), and no more global warming!

There's something so hopeful and slightly melancholy about this. If nothing else, I appreciate it aesthetically.

So, for my part, I'm jumping!

African life spans

Not too long ago in Daily Grist we covered the recent population figures released by the U.N. Among the disturbing figures therein was the fact that the lifespan of the average African has declined by some 15 years in the last decade. It boggles the mind. And since it boggles, visual aids help. So go check out this chart on Marginal Revolution, which makes the point visually.