Articles by David Roberts

The week in sustainable _________

Oops, it wouldn't be a Monday unless I linked to Sustainability Sundays over on WorldChanging, which this week included the week in sustainable vehicles from Mike Millikin and a guest shot from Joel Makower.

The essay from Makower is a reprint from his own blog. It's a business primer on Kyoto, and I highly recommend it. It covers many of the issues touched on in Emily Gertz's third dispatch from Verdopolis -- including the business case for action on climate, greenhouse gas reporting, carbon trading, carbon offsets, and carbon neutrality -- in a somewhat more systematic way, with plentiful links to other resources.

Editorials

A couple of big papers weigh in on Bush admin. environmental malfeasance. First, the Washington Post calls the zombie-esque, won't-stay-dead "Clear [cough] Skies" bill, in gentle editorialese, "flawed." They point out that a compromise bill would be easy to hash out, and they blame both parties equally for not doing so. This is fashionable in Beltway media parlance, this "pox on both their houses" high-mindedness, though it makes one wonder if D.C. scribblers have been paying attention for the last four years.

The L.A. Times bashes the Bushies for ignoring the mercury problem. They are, as is their wont, less circumspect than the Post. Discussing an upcoming U.N. meeting on mercury, they drop this juicy 'graph:

Documents submitted by the U.S. government, meanwhile, present no specific goals or steps, reject the idea of a treaty, call vaguely for voluntary partnerships, and offer to teach others about "best practices." That's a curious phrase coming from the nation just criticized by its own Environmental Protection Agency inspector general for violating scientific procedures in order to come up with an industry-friendly regulation of coal plants, probably the biggest source of mercury emissions in this country.

Indeed.

Of course, we all know that because these papers oppose administration policies, they are liberal, and because they are liberal they are biased, and because they are biased there's no need to listen to what they say about administration policies. Handy!

A valentine

In keeping with the holiday, let me send a valentine out to my one true media love, Knight Ridder environmental correspondent Seth Borenstein, whose lucid, straightforward, BS-free prose -- a virtual miracle in the world of environmental reporting -- are on display in this story on the uncertain effects of Kyoto.

Just plain “green” for me, thanks

Thomas Friedman is doing a public service by pushing his "geo-green" shtick. Any time someone outside the mainstream environmental community, particularly someone as high-profile as Friedman, pushes sensible energy policy, it becomes harder for its industry and administration opponents to dismiss. Frankly, if Paris Hilton wanted to come out and argue that alternative energy improves your sex life, I would praise her to the rafters. Whatever gets the job done.

It is worth, however, keeping our expectations realistic.