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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Moving away from oil could affect investment in oil, warns oil
"While the push for alternatives is important, we must also be mindful that efforts to rapidly promote alternatives could have a chilling effect on investment in the oil sector."
-- Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali Ibrahim Al-Naimi
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The players: cap-and-trade agonistes
In the last few posts, I covered some of the groups and institutions that will shape climate/energy policy in the next few years. Analyst and all-around brainiac Holmes Hummel, in a presentation linked to by Adam Browning, has a nice visual representation that sheds additional light on the landscape, from a slightly different angle. It […]
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Voting has ended: Grist readers have chosen top eco-hero and eco-villain of 2008
Way back before the holiday season, we posted our lists of green heroes and green villains for 2008. Because we are totally Web 3.7 participatorynewmediacroudsourcingcitizenjournalist types, we even opened it up to your votes!
So you voted. And voted, and voted. Then, on Jan. 8, we warned you: only 24 hours left to vote!
Turns out we really meant, er, 24 days. Give or take a week. So you voted some more. But now voting's really closed! For realz. And, without further ado (or delay), we're ready to declare winners.
With 730 votes ... the Grist 2008 Eco-Hero of the Year is ... [drum roll]
The Sierra Club's Bruce Nilles! [crowd roars]Nilles is director of the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign, which has helped coordinate the extraordinary grassroots movement that's sprung up in the last few years to fight against new coal plants. This victory for Nilles is really a victory for that movement, which has -- with very little help from the establishment or resources from big-money funders -- pulled off an amazing string of victories that is still going on. Nice job, movement. And nice job, Bruce.
And now, turning to less pleasant matters:
With 405 votes ... the Grist 2008 Eco-Villain of the year is ...
Flaccid Apparatchik Stephen Johnson! [boos, angry shouts]Johnson, who most everybody thought would be a harmless technocrat, turned out to be one of the worst U.S. EPA administrators in the nation's history, blatantly ignoring the advice of EPA staff and scientists in order to carry out the political hatchet jobs handed down by Dick Cheney. We will miss writing headlines about you, Mr. Johnson. But that's about all we will miss.
Onward to 2009 [already in progress]!
