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

  • Congress is the problem

    Felix Salmon blogs at Reuters about the seeming exhaustion of Obama’s political capital — on both climate change and financial regulations, he just can’t seem to get what he wants out of Congress. I think Matt Yglesias and Ryan Avent both have the appropriate response: the problem here is not Obama, but Congress. Indeed, the […]

    David Roberts Politics

  • The faint silver lining of the Waxman-Markey clean-energy-mandates cloud

    The Waxman-Markey bill would require that 20% of the nation’s power supply come from clean energy (15%) and efficiency (5%) by 2020. But wouldn’t the U.S. have reached those mild targets without any government intervention, through natural market growth? Would the bill’s mandates have any effect at all? A spate of recent analyses have argued […]

    David Roberts Politics

  • Lots of great green stuff in the latest issue of The Atlantic

    I haven’t read The Atlantic much lately, but I picked up the latest issue at the airport and it is superb. Three pieces are worth particular note. First, Joshua Green has a piece on “The Coming Green Economy” that is as good as anything I’ve ever read in popular media about the contours of the […]

    David Roberts Climate & Energy

  • Myth: Waxman-Markey gives away 85 percent of allowances to polluters

    As the Waxman-Markey climate/energy bill nears a make-or-break vote in the House, those who work to improve it need more than ever to understand it first. Smart strategy is based on sound information. On that note: one of the central critiques of the bill is a red herring at best and at worst simply false. […]

    David Roberts Politics