“In the world of energy politics, the sudden vanishing of the word 'coal' is a remarkable and unprecedented event.”
Politics
“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.”
CourageAll Quotes by Jeff Goodell
“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.”
Courage“In the United States, we do a pretty good job of protecting iconic landscapes and postcard views, but the ocean gets no respect.”
Respect“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.”
Science“Bloomberg is famously impatient with beltway politics and believes that to get anything done you need to work from the ground up.”
Politics“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.”
Power“When it comes to energy, cost isn't everything - but it's a lot. Everybody wants cheap power.”
Power“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.”
Environmental“But Big Oil and Big Coal have always been as skilled at propaganda as they are at mining and drilling. Like the tobacco industry before them, their success depends on keeping Americans stupid.”
Success“Among all the tests President Obama faced in his first term, his biggest failure was climate change.”
Change“Nowhere has the political power of coal been more obvious than in presidential campaigns.”
Power“Extracting oil from the tar sands is a nasty, polluting, energy-intensive business.”
Business“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.”
Change“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.”
Power“The biggest tab the public picks up for fossil fuels has to do with what economists call 'external costs,' like the health effects of air and water pollution.”
Health“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.”
Government“Maybe more climate activists will think about the climate change not as an international problem to be resolved in an air-conditioned meeting hall, but as a guerilla war to be fought in the streets.”
Change“"If you are interested enough in the climate crisis to read this post, you probably know that 2 degrees Centigrade of warming (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is the widely acknowledged threshold for ""dangerous"" climate change."”
Change“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.”
Power“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.”
Change