Eric Roston

Science Journalist and Climate Change Expert

BIG IDEAS

• Smashing Boxes
  We break the world down into categories of thought – boxes of a sort – to make it more comprehensible. Yet too much of this specialization obscures the simple and lovely story of how science understands the world to work. Today, many of these categories, whether in our newspapers, congressional committees, or high school classes, are decades or centuries old, and no longer capture the acceleration of knowledge. We are continually inundated with stovepipe stories – Energy! Health! Climate! War!, their unifying tale left to decay in the background. Why not build an epic, singular narrative, starting from a universal common denominator and entwining science into our history, and history into current events? In presenting “Smashing Boxes,” Eric points out something easy to forget, given the daily parade of headlines: Far from being the “enemy” changing the climate, or the “hero” making airplanes, tennis rackets, and bullet-resistant vests stronger and lighter, “carbon” is the core structural element of all life and civilization. It might be the most important word that many people understand the least. If we “follow the carbon” through the history of Earth and civilization, if we watch what it does, how it does it, and where it goes, carbon can unify what we think of as far-flung parts of our experience, and clarify modern humans’ emergence from life and the Earth system. “Smashing boxes” is a way to step back, take a deep breath, and rethink the way we think about opportunities and challenges in this young century.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Eric Roston is a science journalist in Washington, DC, and author of THE CARBON AGE: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat. He is also Senior Associate in the Washington, DC, office of The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, of Duke University. He joined the Institute after a year-long term as a Visiting Scholar at the Washington energy and economics think tank, Resources for the Future.

Previously, Roston wrote for TIME, where he covered economics, politics and technology. He joined the magazine in 2000 as a business reporter in the New York bureau, covering stories such as the collapse of Enron, China's emergence as a force in global trade, and how advanced computing technologies are reshaping the economy. An eyewitness to the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Roston was a part of the reporting team that won a National Magazine Award for best single-issue coverage.

In September 2002, Roston became a part of TIME's Washington bureau. He traveled with President George W. Bush and Senators John Kerry and John Edwards during the 2004 election campaign, providing reporting to the magazine's political team. He was also a frequent contributor to the magazine's work on energy, technology environment, and health. In the spring of 2004, he became Time.com's first blogger, writing a daily commentary on "the technology that will carry us through tomorrow – and the stuff that keeps us stuck in yesterday."

Roston has been a guest on Comedy Central's “The Colbert Report,” CleanSkies.tv, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBC, National Public Radio and many radio stations. Prior to TIME, he wrote for LIFE magazine and contributed to Slate.com, where he wrote the "Today's Papers" column. Roston, who is fluent in Russian, holds an M.A. in Russian literature and linguistics, and a B.A. in modern European history, both from Columbia University.

A Closer Look at Eric

FOCUS AREAS
What's on Eric's current research agenda?

Eric dives deeply into science and technology, teases out stories yet to be told, and delivers them to audiences hungry for new signals in the noise, to help frame current society-scale challenges and opportunities. He may try to persuade you that “important” things are more fun than “fun” things are important.

His recent work has focused on making energy and climate science easier to swallow by showing how they correlate with both wider Earth science and the science of everyday things. Both literally and critically, he has written the book on “carbon.”

ENGAGEMENTS
How have other organizations utilized Eric's expertise, and what's ahead on his schedule?

Eric translates and frames science, going for the dulce et utile – sweet and useful. He challenges readers and audiences to rethink the way we organize our thinking about the world. At the Nicholas Institute, he is involved in efforts to broker new ideas and policy options in the energy-and-climate and environmental arenas, working with stakeholders on every side of every line to remove obstacles to progress.

Recent and forthcoming events:
The Carnegie Institution for Science: Inaugural “Capital Science” lecture of the 2008-2009 season, with James Gustave Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Washington, DC.

Chemical Heritage Foundation: "The Beauty of Science and the Science of Beauty," Molecules That Matter lecture series. Philadelphia.

The New York Public Library, Science, Industry and Business Library: “Smashing Boxes – Carbon Science as the New Paradigm for Scientific Literacy.”

Lyceum Society at the NY Academy of Sciences: “Smashing Boxes – Carbon Science as the New Paradigm for Scientific Literacy.”

NASA Ames Research Center, Director’s Colloquim

AAAS 2009 Annual Conference Panel: “From Drake’s Well to Solar Cells: 100 Years of Energy Transitions.” Talk titled: “New Century, New Threats, New Frame.”

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Who shapes Eric's thinking and inspires his work?

Natalie Angier, Peter Atkins, Stephen Colbert, Roald Hoffmann, Steve Martin, Steven Pinker, Richard Smalley (1943-2005), Carl Zimmer

RECOMMENDED READING
What's on Eric's must-read list?

Mother Tongue, by Bill Bryson
Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Natural Capitalism, by Paul Hawkins, Amory Lovins, and Hunter Lovins
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
The Control of Nature, by John McPhee
The Gifts of Athena, by Joel Mokyr
The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes
Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth, by Gitta Sereny
Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Consilience, by E.O. Wilson

MIND FUEL
Which blogs, web sites, and industry events does Eric tap into to feed his mind and fuel his creativity?

• Jennifer Ouellette’s Cocktail Party Physics (http://twistedphysics.blogspot.com and http://blogs.discovery.com/twisted_physics/)
• ScienceBlogs (http://www.scienceblogs.com)
• Tom Levenson’s Inverse Square blog (http://inversesquare.wordpress.com)
• Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth (http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/)
• RealClimate (http://www.RealClimate.org)
• Joseph Romm’s Climate Progress (http://www.climateprogress.org)
• Carl Zimmer’s The Loom (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/)

Other
The Washington Post runs a cheeky “next-day” television column called “We Watch… So You Don’t Have to.” Eric takes this approach to reading professional scientific journals.