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

  • On the death of the climate bill

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has officially announced that there will be no climate bill this year. What's happened is total and complete surrender. There's no silver lining in this cloud.

    David Roberts Politics

  • Home Star teeters on the edge

    Remember Home Star, the killer bill that would incentivize thousands of home energy retrofits across the country, reduce energy bills for struggling homeowners, put some of America’s hardest hit trades back to work, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions? The one backed by a coalition of more than 1,700 organizations including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce […]

    David Roberts Culture

  • How to make energy programs work better (for free!)

    I’ve written before (more than once) that energy reformers should pay more attention to behavior. Instead there is an almost universal obsession with technology and economic cost, narrowly construed. If you think of people as rational interest maximizers, as per reigning economic folk theory, price is all that matters. You want to change behavior, you […]

    David Roberts Culture

  • Utilities are trying to pull off the scam of the decade

    I’m technically on vacation, but there’s an extremely important fight going on in the background right now so I want to weigh in, even at the risk of irritating my long-suffering family. Here’s the deal: Right now, two things are happening in parallel. The first is getting all the attention, but the second is, in […]

    David Roberts Politics