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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A Q&A on John McCain’s climate platform, issued by his campaign
The following is a Q&A on John McCain’s climate platform, released on Monday by the McCain campaign. I’m posting it here because it gets into more detail than any other published material I’ve seen. —– Q&A: John McCain’s Climate Platform How does cap-and-trade work? • Cap-and-trade is a mechanism that would set a limit on […]
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And I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!
One thing you frequently hear from nuclear proponents is that nuke plants would pencil out fine if not for all those pesky safety regulations, NIMBYs, lawsuits, protests, and other political ephemera. If we could just get rid of that stuff! But that’s a market democracy. It’s not like failing because everyone hates you and tries […]
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What would the use of carbon offsets mean for McCain’s climate policy?
To me the most striking element of McCain’s just-released carbon cap-and-trade plan is that it would, at least at the outset, allow regulated entities to achieve 100 percent of their emission reductions through the purchase of domestic or international offsets. By way of comparison, the Lieberman-Warner climate bill headed for the floor of the Senate […]
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Emission reduction targets proposed by McCain are insufficient but squarely in the mainstream
Here is the schedule of targets John McCain has proposed for his cap-and-trade program: 2012: Return emissions to 2005 levels (18 percent above 1990 levels) 2020: Return emissions to 1990 levels (15 percent below 2005 levels) 2030: 22 percent below 1990 levels (34 percent below 2005 levels) 2050: 60 percent below 1990 levels (66 percent […]
