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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How to get the boob tube to tell the truth about climate change
What if there were a group that worked with TV & movie writers to insure that info about climate in pop culture was frequent and accurate? This group could be it.
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Obama was wrong not to mention climate change in his State of the Union
Fresh off the hottest year on record, Obama's 2011 State of the Union said ... nothing about climate change. This is a failure on Obama's part.
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Obama's energy gambit: a call for less coal
None of the targets Obama offered in his State of the Union -- 80 percent clean energy, 80 percent access to high-speed rail, a million electric cars -- have any policy force. They are offered as signaling devices, attempts to frame political debates to come. In that context, I thought what he did on energy was quite a bit more interesting and significant than it's being given credit for.
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What's behind Newt Gingrich's proposal to abolish the EPA?
Everyone on the internets is busy mocking Newt Gingrich's call to abolish the EPA. And that is as it should be -- I would never ask anyone to stop mocking Newt Gingrich. Rarely has the universe mixed pomposity and dimwittery into such an exquisitely mockworthy package. I do want to note, however, that what Gingrich is trying to pull off is not just old-fashioned Republican-style "leave corporate polluters alooooone!" Don't get me wrong: Newt wants to remove constraints on polluters! But he knows (unlike his buddies in Congress) that such a baldly retrograde position will not be popular with the public, which actually likes clean air. So he needs some kind of alternative. That's why he's proposing to replace the EPA with something called the Environmental Solutions Agency.
