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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WaPo interviews Obama energy adviser Carol Browner
The Washington Post sat down for an interview with Carol Browner, Obama's energy adviser. For you videophobes, there's a transcript here.
Here's part one:
Here's part two:
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Grist pulled no punches in covering all of George Bush's dirt
A movie no one would make. Imagine that back in 1999 you were a Hollywood studio executive and a movie producer brought you the following pitch: A bumbling, incurious child of privilege wastes his youth on Oedipal rebellion. After stumbling through a series of failed business ventures and an undistinguished stint as governor […]
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Better isn't enough
"President-elect Obama's goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 falls short of the response needed by world leaders to meet the challenge of reducing emissions to levels that will actually spare us the worst effects of climate change."
-- Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
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Observations and reflections from a House hearing on stimulus, efficiency, and green jobs
On Thursday I attended a hearing of the House global warming select committee on stimulus, efficiency, and green jobs. You can find a list of attendees, their full written testimony, and some pictures on the committee website.
Just a few observations.
First, and this will shock no one, Van Jones is a marvel. (It is not normal for Congressional testimony to solicit applause.) To take one example from today: I have labored through thousands of words on Grist to try to explain why the most common economic models fail to fully account for the benefits of efficiency investments. In doing so I have bored even myself and built great, airy rhetorical castles that only masochists would want to explore.
Here's what Jones said at the hearing: "Get the math right: don't just count what you spend, count what you save."
Um ... dammit. Why didn't I think of putting it that way? I could have trimmed 14,000 words down to 14.
Here's his opening statement, if you're interested:
