Articles by David Roberts
David Roberts was a staff writer for Grist. You can follow him on Twitter, if you're into that sort of thing.
All Articles
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The future
Over on Worldchanging, Vinay Gupta asks: What will environmental policy in the 22nd century look like? His answers are pretty heady stuff.
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Pension funds
If you were intrigued by this blurb in Daily Grist on CalPERS, check out the in-depth story by William Greider in The Nation on the increasing power of public pension funds to affect social and environmental change.
In the wake of Enron-style corporate scandals, in which public pension funds lost more than $300 billion, some of the leading funds have restyled themselves as more aggressive reformers. They are picking fights with Wall Street orthodoxy they long accepted, like the obsessive maximizing of short-term gains. More important, they are broadening their definition of fiduciary obligations to retirees by trying to enforce corporate responsibilities to serve society's long-term prospects. Instead of adhering passively to market dogma, the activist funds now regularly accuse corporate managements and major financial houses of negligently or willfully injuring the long-term interests of pension-fund investors, therefore injuring the economy and society, too. Pension-fund wealth is thus being mobilized as financial leverage to break up the narrow-minded thinking of finance capital and to confront the antisocial behavior of corporations.
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Conspiracy theories
In a piece discussing the import of today's kick-off of the Kyoto Protocol, Chris Mooney makes a point I also tried to make in my review of Crichton's book, and again in this post.
Those who remain in denial about the seriousness of global climate change must now defend a truly ludicrous position. They must argue that the rest of the world is suffering from a mass delusion, a fantasy so powerful that over a hundred nations have independently fallen for the same alarmist myth; and furthermore that the 35 developed nations facing binding commitments under Kyoto have voluntarily agreed to measures that would severely damage their economies all for nothing. When we hear someone like Senator James Inhofe speak of a climate change "hoax," it's pretty clear that he has a conspiracy theory along these lines in mind.
Except for the part about "severely damage their economies," which I think is far from certain, Yes. Crichton tries to portray climate skeptics as a brave band of level heads battling a wave of alarmism. But think about it. What are the chances that virtually the entire scientific establishment, along with hundreds of self-interested politicians, have been duped, and this group of (conservative) people in the U.S. has seen through the facade? I mean, sure, it's possible. As the skeptics are fond of saying, the scientific consensus has been proven wrong before.
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Exactly
Sacramento County plans to join the green building revolution, but it's not necessarily a high-minded ethical decision.
Music to my ears.It's about on dollars and cents. Specifically, how to stretch them farther.
