Articles by David Roberts

The choice of what to do with carbon revenue is a clear-cut issue of justice

The debate around various climate policies sounds complex, but there’s a simple way to understand it: follow the money. When we put a price on carbon emissions, we place value on something that used to be worthless. That means all the sudden there’s a big new pot of money. The most important question facing policymakers […]

Alternative energy revolution

XKCD is so damn funny.

Friday music blogging: Neko Case

Neko Case has the most compelling voice in popular music. Full stop. She could sing the phone book and it would sound thrilling, and beautiful, and mysterious, and vaguely threatening. Luckily, she's a really good songwriter too.

She got her start in cowboy punk bands, but drifted pretty quickly to a kind of timeless Americana, starting with 1997's The Virginian. Of course, as every indie fanboy knows, she really came to popular attention as a singer in the New Pornographers, who burst on the scene with 2000's Mass Romantic. She didn't do any writing for them, but she elevated every song she appeared on and is at least partially responsible for most of their classics.

Her army of ardent admirers (yes, yes, she's beautiful) helped make 2002's Blacklisted a big success, and every album since then has gotten richer, not to mention more successful.

The latest, out this month, is Middle Cyclone. It's got guest appearances from an array of indie luminaries from M. Ward to members of the New Pornographers, but as always the focus is on that spooky, haunting, amazing voice.

This isn't the best song from the album, but given the context, how could I choose any other? It's a cover of a song from the band Sparks: "Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth." Word.

Energy efficiency saves lives

The New Yorker's Steve Coll is reading through the stimulus bill. This is interesting:

The energy-efficiency issue is the most interesting [in Title III, "Department of Defense"]. In 2008, a Defense Science Board Task Force studied the Pentagon's use of energy and how its dependence on costly (in lives and budgets) convoys hauling gasoline and jet fuel in war theatres might be reduced. The report found that one of the most fuel-sucking practices of the military is its use of generators in the field to run air conditioners to cool highly energy-inefficient tents and trailers. In Iraq alone, the report implies, more than a few soldiers have died on roads where their mission was hauling fuel to cool down tents and barracks that, if properly insulated, might not have required so much energy in the first place. There are many other fascinating findings about war-fighting and energy, if you don't already possess enough ridiculously dense and wonky material for your book club.