Articles by David Roberts

Paulson brags on his delayer boss

This 'graph on the WSJ blog just about made me choke:

Of course, the obsession over what do to with developing countries -- especially China -- is one of President Bush's biggest environmental legacies, Secretary Paulson said, continuing the administration's week-long farewell tour. By relentlessly focusing on the role of developing-world emissions, President Bush "changed the debate," Sec. Paulson said.

Two points. First, the strategy of delaying U.S. action on climate change by recourse to fear-mongering about China and India is not a Bush invention. Conservatives (and, er, Democrats) have been pulling that crap since the '90s. That was the basis for the Senate rejecting Kyoto via the Byrd-Hagel Resolution.

Second, it is true that Bush has kept this delaying tactic at the center of the national debate. What is truly mystifying is why a Bush administration official who purports to be concerned about climate change would boast about it.

ZapRoot takes on 'clean coal'

The anti-coal bandwagon grows ever larger:

No leaky

From a story on Congressional tensions with Obama comes the news that the transition team apparently didn't tell anyone in that body about its upcoming cabinet choices:

Newt Gingrich is an idiot

This short video should utterly discredit Newt Gingrich:

Then again, if nothing has discredited this dimwit yet, it's hard to see what could.