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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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