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

  • Barack Obama is not Bagger Vance

    Things are pretty grim among progressives these days, what with health care bogging down and climate legislation on indefinite delay; right wing crazies everywhere and Blue Dogs intransigent; the organized coalition that brought Obama to office fractured and ineffective. Disillusionment is in the air. In response, on listservs and private conversations, I’m hearing more and […]

    David Roberts Politics

  • Friday music blogging: Lightning Dust

    Last year I FMB’d Black Mountain, a druggy, bell-bottomed Canadian indie band that does fantastic stoner rock. Two members of that band, Amber Webber and Joshua Wells, formed a side project a few years ago called Lightning Dust. They have a new album out, Infinite Light, and it’s well worth your time. Where Black Mountain […]

    David Roberts Uncategorized

  • If progressives want a Clean Energy Bank, they need better economics

    One of the most excellent pieces of the climate bill now awaiting defenestration at the hands Senate Blue Dogs is its creation of a Clean Energy Bank that would help finance nascent clean energy projects. More specifically, it is “an autonomous Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) within the Energy Department” that would “provide a suite […]

    David Roberts Technology

  • Should greens ally with natural gas against coal?

    I was fully prepared to hate this op-ed from T. Boone Pickens and Ted Turner, mainly because Pickens is kind of shady and I’m generally sick of rich old establishment white guys telling us how to transform our energy systems. However! It turned out to be pretty good — far better than what you normally […]

    David Roberts Politics