Articles by David Roberts

Hot wind

Frequent Grist contributor Bill McKibben has a column in today's NYT saying that environmentalists should get behind wind energy. He is sympathetic to some enviros' objections and rather gentle toward them.

I fully agree with McKibben, but I can't say I share his sympathy.

Oil and gas exploration is ravaging the American West. The nuclear industry is resurgent. And oh yeah, the globe is frying.

If environmentalists take global warming seriously, and expect others to take it seriously, maybe they shouldn't become bitchy provincialists the minute you want to build a wind turbine that impedes the scenic view off the back porches of their vacation homes.

So Ted Kennedy? Shut up.

(Speaking of wind, there's breaking news on the hotly contested Cape Cod wind farm. Looks like the NIMBYs may win after all.)

Gallons and gallons of Kyoto

Kyoto goes into effect tomorrow. You kind of think you generally know what it's about, but you're not really clear on the details. I feel your pain. Luckily, Bruce Sterling's latest Viridian Note -- "Ten Gallons of Kyoto" -- tells you everything you need to know. And I mean everything, all ten gallons of it. I must quote his intro:

Let's face it: it's a big deal that Kyoto has come into force in February 2005. People who are genuinely serious about the Greenhouse issue need some kind of nodding acquaintanceship with the ins and outs of this multilateral national agreement. The following analysis and history was written by Canadian enviros, so at least it seems to be factual and objective, and it lacks the contemptuous, fraudulent bullying and panic-stricken, handwringing qualities typical of every mention of Kyoto in contemporary American media. Therefore I've dumped the thing here in its entirety.

By the way, Sterling is cool, and Veridian is cool, and I don't know why I don't link over there more often. I'm gonna start.

Mission statements

I promise I won't point to everything Mark Schmitt writes (though that would be no small public service), but I do want to draw attention to this follow-up to the issues covered in this post. It seems both Yglesias and I misunderstood Schmitt in a subtle but telling way.

A no-nukes argument with no waste

OMFG. This essay from Tom Paine's Patrick C. Doherty just made my day. It's a concise, effective argument against nuclear power that isn't based on nuclear waste.

Don't get me wrong -- nuclear waste is nasty. Nasty and more-or-less permanent. It's a compelling reason to be leery of nuclear power. But I'm not sure it's enough. The argument of the industry, taken up by some prominent enviros recently, is that we need a non-CO2-producing energy source, a big one, now, and nuclear is the large-scale source that's available. If you're convinced that nuclear power is viable, that it's a large untapped source of non-polluting energy, the problem of what to do with waste isn't all that compelling. Many people's intuitive reaction is: We're smart. We'll figure something out.

So Doherty doesn't even mention waste. He has two parallel arguments.