Jeff Goodell
Jeff Goodell
Jeff Goodell is an American author and contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine. Goodell's writings are known for a focus on energy and environmental issues. He is a 2016 Fellow at the New America Foundation...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
oil political president
Obama wants to be thought of as the president who freed us from foreign oil. But if he doesn't show some political courage, he may well be remembered as the president who cooked the planet.
presidential political campaigns
Nowhere has the political power of coal been more obvious than in presidential campaigns.
political coal economy
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.
drilling elect government oil political presidents price putting recall taught votes win
In any crass political calculation, drilling for oil will always win more votes than putting a price on carbon. But if I recall what I was taught in fifth-grade American government class, we elect presidents to do more than crass political calculations.
drill mine offer roll science solutions sound tweak
Drill everything, mine everything, roll back regulations, tweak the science, expedite permits. Sound familiar? The Republicans offer up more 19th-Century solutions to our 21st-Century energy problems.
admitted biggest coal fast hard industry
Even the biggest coal boosters have long admitted that coal is a dying industry - the fight has always been over how fast and how hard the industry will fall.
coal electric inspiring million power
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.
billion corn crop ethanol federal handouts including itself total twice wheat
Corn is already the most subsidized crop in America, raking in a total of $51 billion in federal handouts between 1995 and 2005 - twice as much as wheat subsidies and four times as much as soybeans. Ethanol itself is propped up by hefty subsidies, including a fifty-one-cent-per-gallon tax allowance for refiners.
air america backward busted jobs lives myth pillars thousand
One of the pillars of backward thinking in America is the idea that you can have jobs or you can have clean air and water, but you can't have both. That myth has been busted a thousand times, but still it lives on.
built
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.
almost barrier country likely limitless natural vanish
What is likely to vanish - or be transformed beyond recognition - are many of the things we think of when we think of Australia: the barrier reef, the koalas, the sense of the country as a land of almost limitless natural resources.
fleeing rising since
Without electrons, there is no Google. And without clean electrons, there will be no Google customers, since we'll all be too busy fleeing from rising seas, droughts, and disease.
australia carbon cut deserts designed empty expect forefront might
With so much at risk, you might expect Australia to be at the forefront of the clean-energy revolution and the international effort to cut carbon pollution. After all, the continent's vast, empty deserts were practically designed for solar-power installations.
companies environment large putting record regions stopped
But overall, Obama's record on the environment has been uninspired - and that's putting it kindly. He hasn't stopped coal companies from blowing up mountaintops and devastating large regions of Appalachia.