Quotes from Jeff Goodell

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.

Once we start deliberately messing with the climate systems, we could inadvertently shift rainfall patterns (climate models have shown that rainfall in the Amazon might be particularly vulnerable), causing collapse of ecosystems, drought, famine, and more.

Australia has suffered a decade of drought, epic floods, a Category 5 cyclone, and a plague of locusts. But just because Aussies have the biggest carbon footprint in the world, it doesn't mean they're stupid.

The floods and fires and storms and droughts that Australia has suffered in the last few years have left no doubt in many Australians' minds about just how much is a stake in a super-heated world.

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

Is it in our national interest to overheat the planet? That's the question Obama faces in deciding whether to approve Keystone XL, a 2,000-mile-long pipeline that will bring 500,000 barrels of tar-sand oil from Canada to oil refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

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

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.

Australia is the only island continent on the planet, which means that changes caused by planet-warming pollution - warmer seas, which can drive stronger storms, and more acidic oceans, which wreak havoc on the food chain - are even more deadly here.

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

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

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.

With nine degrees of warming, computer models project that Australia will look like a disaster movie. Habitats for most vertebrates will vanish. Water supply to the Murray-Darling Basin will fall by half, severely curtailing food production.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Nobody disputes that cheap natural gas would be a good thing for the economy. The question is, is this a sustainable new development that can be counted on for decades to come, or simply a 'bubble' brought on by a land grab and drilling frenzy?

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.