Jeff Goodell Quotes

Geoengineering - the deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the earth's climate to offset global warming - is a nightmare fix for climate change.

Nowhere has the political power of coal been more obvious than in presidential campaigns.

Coal boosters like to tout coal as cheap and plentiful - well, not anymore. At least not in China.

Obama's record on climate issues is not all bad.

Climate scientists have long pointed to the Southwest as one of the places in the U.S. that is most vulnerable to global warming impacts, especially drought. And if there's one thing that even climate denialists don't dispute, dry things burn.

When it comes to global warming, coal is the gorilla in the room.

In reality, Republicans have long been at war with clean energy. They have ridiculed investments in solar and wind power, bashed energy-efficiency standards, attacked state moves to promote renewable energy and championed laws that would enshrine taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels while stripping them from wind and solar.

In the world of energy politics, the sudden vanishing of the word 'coal' is a remarkable and unprecedented event.

In reality, studies show that investments to spur renewable energy and boost energy efficiency generate far more jobs than oil and coal.

Bloomberg's $50 million is not going to revolutionize the electric power industry. But his willingness to fight is already inspiring others to see Big Coal differently.

Americans don't pay much attention to environmental issues, because they aren't sexy. I mean, cleaning up coal plants and reining in outlaw frackers is hugely important work, but it doesn't get anybody's pulse racing.

Although most Americans don't know it, the U.S. gets more oil from Canada than it does from the entire Middle East.

It's not all Obama's fault: His plans to rebuild America's energy infrastructure have been hampered by the recession, and his efforts on global warming have been stymied by Tea Party wackos and weak-kneed Democrats in Congress.

Some studies have shown that natural gas could, in fact, be worse for the climate than coal.

One thing you can say about nuclear power: the people who believe it is the silver bullet for America's energy problems never give up.

So if you want to know how Exxon Mobil can make $10 billion profit in 90 days, just look around. The whole world was built for them.

Some studies suggest that the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free by the end of the century.

Bill Gates is a relative newcomer to the fight against global warming, but he's already shifting the debate over climate change.

In the United States, we do a pretty good job of protecting iconic landscapes and postcard views, but the ocean gets no respect.

Mark Ruffalo, aka the Incredible Hulk, is the natural gas industry's worst nightmare: a serious, committed activist who is determined to use his star power as a superhero in the hottest movie of the moment to draw attention the environmental and public health risks of fracking.

Have we failed to slow global warming pollution in part because climate and environmental activists have been too polite and well behaved?

The coal industry is an even larger part of the Australian economy than it is of the American, and it has an enormous amount of political power.

One of the big questions in the climate change debate: Are humans any smarter than frogs in a pot? If you put a frog in a pot and slowly turn up the heat, it won't jump out. Instead, it will enjoy the nice warm bath until it is cooked to death. We humans seem to be doing pretty much the same thing.

This Dewdrop World is a beautiful, courageous, intimate film about love and loss. It may also be the deepest meditation on climate change that I've ever seen.

If you think Wall Street firms have it good, you haven't looked closely at Big Oil.

When it comes to climate and energy, Gates is a radical consumerist. In his view, energy consumption is good - it just needs to be clean energy.

In the U.S. alone, weather disasters caused $50 billion in economic damages in 2010.

It may be too late for West Virginia to save itself from the ravages of Big Coal. But it's not too late for America.

For better or worse, the bulk of coal industry jobs are in Appalachia - and when that coal is gone, so are the jobs.

Extracting oil from the tar sands is a nasty, polluting, energy-intensive business.

President Obama is in no danger of being judged by history as an eco-radical.

When it comes to energy, cost isn't everything - but it's a lot. Everybody wants cheap power.

Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper.

Bloomberg is famously impatient with beltway politics and believes that to get anything done you need to work from the ground up.

Compared to coal, which generates almost half the electricity in the United States, natural gas is indeed a cleaner, less polluting fuel. But compared to, say, solar, it's filthy. And of course there is nothing renewable about natural gas.

In the Arctic, things are already getting freaky. Temperatures have warmed three times faster than the global average.

Climate change is a global issue - from the point of view of the Earth's climate, a molecule of CO2 emitted in Bejing is the same as a molecule emitted in Sydney.

Among all the tests President Obama faced in his first term, his biggest failure was climate change.