Jeff Goodell

“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.”

“You think the weather is weird now? Just wait. A new MIT study, just published in a peer-reviewed journal, projects that the Earth could see warming of more than 9 degrees F by 2100 - more than twice earlier projections.”

“You gotta love Rick Perry's swagger. The Texas Governor is out there in the Iowa cornfields, unabashedly going to toe-to-toe with President Obama, doing his best to instantly cast himself as the big dog in the Republican pack.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In reality, studies show that investments to spur renewable energy and boost energy efficiency generate far more jobs than oil and coal.”

“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.”

“It may be too late for West Virginia to save itself from the ravages of Big Coal. But it's not too late for America.”

“Obama's record on climate issues is not all bad.”

“The idea that human beings have taken a few steps closer toward asserting control over the Earth's climate is likely to strike you as a really bad idea.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Among all the tests President Obama faced in his first term, his biggest failure was climate change.”

“Coal boosters like to tout coal as cheap and plentiful - well, not anymore. At least not in China.”

“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.”

“When it comes to climate and energy, Gates is a radical consumerist. In his view, energy consumption is good - it just needs to be clean energy.”

“Not since the days of George W. Bush's 'Clear Skies' and 'Healthy Forests' initiatives has America been presented with a project as cravenly corporate and backward-looking as the Keystone XL pipeline.”