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Articles by Eric Roston

Eric Roston is senior associate at the Nicholas Institute and author of The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat. Read the prologue.

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First Things First: The BP oil spill today became the biggest such disaster ever in the Gulf, eclipsing the Ixtoc I spill off Mexico in 1979-1980, according to high-end government estimates. A federal judge last week struck down the Obama administration’s six-month moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf. U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman instantly became an overnight “folk hero” to some in the Gulf. The Interior Department is developing a new moratorium, but has yet to share details. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has assumed the public mantle of leadership in the crisis, implicating the federal government response as a failure. This transparency only goes so far, though. Jindal last week vetoed a state bill that would have opened to the public all documents about the spill from his office.

“Destruction could be there”: Senate Democrats streamed out of a lively caucus meeting last week described alternately as “thrilling” and “inspirational.” Palpable skepticism of Dem... Read more

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  • The Climate Post: Who wants to be a climate scientist?!

    First things first: Tuesday night Rolling Stone magazine unveiled to a limited audience its new article called “The Runaway General.” But when something “goes viral” in the Internet age, there’s no such thing as a limited audience. In the piece, General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, derides and criticizes […]

  • The Climate Post: Nothing shaking on Barton’s ‘shakedown’ street

    First things first: Congressional investigators have released material documenting troubles at the Deepwater Horizon site before it failed–and a culture of cost-cutting at BP that elevated catastrophic risk. Five days before the April 20 explosion, a BP engineer called it a “nightmare well which [sic] has everyone all over the place.” A detailed letter to […]

  • The Climate Post: U.S. Senate gives a disapproving look

    First things first: U.S. senators rose one after the next in support of or opposition to a measure that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to declare heat-trapping gases pollutants. The piece in question, a “disapproval resolution,” was sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). In her floor speech, she skewered the Obama […]

  • The Climate Post: Obama retrieves energy, climate debate from Gulf

    First things first: Just as discussion of climate change and clean energy dipped below the oil-stained surface of the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama yesterday tried to reach in and offer Climate Policy Resuscitation. He delivered a broad address on the U.S. economy at Carnegie Mellon University, touring the financial crisis, health care reform, […]