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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Decent media is possible
Witness as AlJazeera English does a segment on carbon cap-and-trade that is about 4,587,209 times more intelligent and informative than anything you will ever see on a U.S. cable network:
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Friday music blogging: Dan Roberts
You know who's awesome? My little brother!
No, wait, maybe that's not the best way to start. Let's start here:
I am far, far from a jazz head. I do dabble, however, with the occasional group that has its roots in jazz but mixes in healthy doses of rock, funk, prog, or electronic dance music. Think, for example, Medeski Martin & Wood, Wayne Horvitz, The Bad Plus, Brad Mehldau, Jaga Jazzist, Marco Benevento ... that kind of stuff. (Yes, I'm aware those artists sound nothing like each other, but you know what I mean. Or maybe you don't.)
Anyway, it so happens that Washington D.C. is blessed with another hot up-and-coming jazz pianist who works in a similar genre. If you're in D.C. you may have seen him playing around in various trios, quartets, occasionally alone -- or if you happen to be active military, you may have seen him playing on USO tours in Kuwait and Iraq with Al Franken, via his job as pianist for the Army band, recently rechristened [wince] Downrange.His name is Dan Roberts, and his new album is called Can't Not. It's rocking my world, and not just because it shares my DNA. Check it out.
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Dueling NPR stories illustrate surreal disconnect around climate discussion
Two NPR stories illustrate one of the most frustrating things about the climate debate. First there's this one, which makes the important and necessary point that the climate problem -- or specifically, the "reducing emissions enough to stabilize the climate" problem -- is much, much bigger than most people understand, and that we're going to have to spend trillions of dollars in coming years if we want to save our asses.
Great, right?
Then the following day we get part two of the story, which says that the sheer size and severity of the problem mean we need a new approach. What new approach? Well, according to Dan Sarewitz of Arizona State University, we need to "invent our way out of the problem." Huh? Apparently, that means we don't want any of those nasty, politically difficult policies that raise the price of dirty energy. Those are too hard. "Doomed," he says. Instead he wants a new paradigm:
