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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Economics cage match: Stavins’ minimalism vs. Houser’s full-court press
Whenever I criticize economists I get yelled at by economists because I’m no economist and what do I know. So I’m trying a different approach: I’m going to compare and contrast two economic perspectives on climate/energy policy. See if you can guess which one I prefer! Textbook economics Representing what he calls the “textbook economics […]
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The hidden costs and benefits of things we take for granted
Raj Patel has an interesting list of “things that aren’t as cheap as you think,” with an always-welcome reminder that many industries and social practices have costs that don’t appear in the sticker price. These “externalities” are offloaded to the public; they represent, in effect, enormous subsidies. Free marketeers hate market-distorting subsidies, right? For the […]
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A response to teabaggers
This morning, my piece on the Audi “green police” ad made its way onto the Drudge Report. Grist got crushed with traffic, and as always when my work drifts into the rightosphere, I got some choice emails. Most emailers objected to my use of the terms “teabag” and “teabaggers.” Appaaarently, there’s some sort of deviant […]
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Four stories that should have changed the media narrative … but didn’t
One of the most frustrating things about covering national energy politics is that conventional wisdom in D.C. never seems to change. The incestuous circle of journalists, pundits, lobbyists, and lawmakers known as The Village has its own set of narratives about climate/energy policy. Those narratives are a) completely at odds with the rest of the […]
