Jeff Goodell

“Subsidies are hugely important; they represent America's de facto energy policy.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The first sign of whether Obama is serious about confronting the climate crisis will be revealed by how he organizes the White House.”

“From the industry's point of view, the problem is not that coal companies blast the top off mountains, turning the area into a moonscape and polluting the air and releasing toxic chemical into what's left of the local streams and aquifers. It's that the people who live near the mines are too cozy with their cousins.”

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

“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.”

“The natural gas industry has worked long and hard to smear Josh Fox, the director of 'Gasland,' and has failed.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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