Jeff Goodell
Born: Silicon Valley, US
Jeff Goodell is a journalist, author and commentator on environmental and energy issues, who has become an advocate on climate change, particularly in relation to the coal industry and proposed geoengineering technologies.
Goodell was born and raised in Silicon Valley, and his early journalistic career drew on that experience. He wrote extensively about the culture of those who worked and lived in the heartland of digital technology design and manufacturing, including his memoir Sunnyvale. Since 1996 he has worked as a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, and has been published in the New York Times Magazine, Wired, and The New Republic.
In 2001 Goodell wrote an article about the American coal industry for the New York Times Magazine, which sparked an interest in the environmental, cultural and economic impacts of what is one of the USA’s biggest industries. His book Our Story is an account of the experiences of a group of coal miners trapped by a sudden flood in the Pennsylvania Quecreek Mine in 2002. He continued to investigate the environmental and social cost of the coal industry, in several articles, culminating in the publication in 2006 of Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future.
In preparation for that book, Goodell spent time underground with miners in the USA and China, aboard an oceanic research ship with climate scientists and hiking the West Virginia ranges to see the impact of mountaintop removal mining. The New York Times described the book as “a compelling indictment of one of the country’s biggest, most powerful and most antiquated industries.”
Goodell’s most recent book How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate describes some of the contemporary moves to manipulate the climate to slow or stop the impact of global warming. He explores the work of respected scientists and the fringe elements of the geoengineering movement, considering the potential and pitfalls of this ambitious idea. His book considers the environmental and political risks of geoengineering, but contends that interventionist management of the climate may be inevitable, and explores how it might be done.
Career highlights
1996: Appointed Contributing Editor, Rolling Stone
1996: The Cyberthief and the Samurai: The true story of Kevin Mitnick and the man who hunted him down
2000: Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family, selected as a New York Times Notable Book
2002: Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith
2006: Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future
2010: How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate
More by and about Jeff Goodell
‘If you’re still not sick of geoengineering: A Q&A with Jeff Goodell’, Freakonomics, http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/if-youre-still-not-sick-of-geoengineering-a-qa-with-jeff-goodell/
‘Can we ‘cool the planet ‘ through geoengineering’, NPR Radio, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125789622
‘A Hard Look at the Perils and Potential of Geoengineering’, Environment 360, http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2260&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+YaleEnvironment360+%28Yale+Environment+360%29
‘As the world burns’, Rolling Stone, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/12697/64918
‘A Conversation with Jeff Goodell about Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future’, BookBrowse, http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm?author_number=1330
References
Jeff Goodell, http://jeff-goodell.com/
‘A Conversation with Jeff Goodell, author of How to Cool the Planet’, http://www.jeff-goodell.com/QA.html
