Jeff Goodell is an American author and contributing editor to ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its co ...
'' magazine.
[ Goodell's writings are known for a focus on energy and environmental issues. He is Senior Fellow at the ]Atlantic Council
The Atlantic Council is an American think tank in the field of international affairs, favoring Atlanticism, founded in 1961. It manages sixteen regional centers and functional programs related to international security and global economic pro ...
and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
.
Youth and education
Jeff Goodell was born in Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
The city was ...
. He grew up in Sunnyvale and worked briefly at Apple Computer in the early 1980s. He graduated from University of California, Berkeley, in 1984, then helped edit Zyzzyva
''Zyzzyva'' is a triannual magazine of writers and artists. It places an emphasis on showcasing emerging voices and never before published writers in addition to the already established. Based in San Francisco, it began publishing in 1985. ''ZYZ ...
, a literary magazine in San Francisco. He moved to New York City and attended graduate school at Columbia University, where he received an M.F.A. in 1990.
Career
Goodell started his journalism career at ''7 Days'', a Manhattan weekly founded and edited by Adam Moss. He covered cops, crime, AIDS, and politics. In 1990, 7 Days won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence. After freelancing for a few years, Goodell became a Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its co ...
in 1995. Since then, he has written hundreds of pieces for the magazine, including cover stories about climate politics, Steve Jobs, and President Barack Obama.
Goodell has published six books, including ''Sunnyvale'' (2000) a personal memoir about growing up in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Count ...
and the breakdown of his family; ''Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith'' (2002), about the Pennsylvania Quecreek Mine Rescue of nine trapped coal miners in 2002, which was a ''New York Times'' Best Seller; and '' Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future'' (2006), which the ''New York Times'' called "a compelling indictment of one of the country's biggest, most powerful and most antiquated industries...well-written, timely, and powerful."
In 2010 he published ''How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate''["Can We 'Cool the Planet' through Geoengineering?"](_blank)
NPR interview on ''Fresh Air
''Fresh Air'' is an American radio talk show broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the United States since 1985. It is produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The show's host is Terry Gross. , the show was syndicated t ...
'', April 15, 2010 about geoengineering
Climate engineering (also called geoengineering) is a term used for both carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM), also called solar geoengineering, when applied at a planetary scale.IPCC (2022Chapter 1: Introduction and F ...
, global warming
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in a broader sense also includes ...
, and climate change mitigation
Climate change mitigation is action to limit climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases or removing those gases from the atmosphere. The recent rise in global average temperature is mostly caused by emissions from fossil fuels bu ...
. The book discusses ideas by Ken Caldeira
Kenneth Caldeira (born 1960) is an American atmospheric scientist. His areas of research include ocean acidification, climate effects of trees, intentional climate modification, interactions in the global carbon cycle/climate system, and sustai ...
, James Lovelock
James Ephraim Lovelock (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022) was an English independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating sy ...
, David Keith, Raymond Pierrehumbert
Raymond Thomas Pierrehumbert is the Halley Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford. Previously, he was Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. He was a lead author on the Third Assessment Report of th ...
, Stephen Salter
Stephen Hugh Salter, (born 7 December 1938) is Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design at the University of Edinburgh and inventor of the eponymous Salter duck wave energy device. Salter is also a proponent of geoengineering and is responsi ...
, and Lowell Wood
Lowell Lincoln Wood Jr. (born 1941) is an American astrophysicist who has been involved with the Strategic Defense Initiative and with geoengineering studies. He has been affiliated with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Hoover Insti ...
among others. In 2011, ''How to Cool the Planet'' won the Grantham Prize (Award of Special Merit).
His most recent book, ''The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World'', which describes visits to places likely to be inundated by rising sea levels, was published by Little, Brown in October 2017. It was a ''New York Times'' Critics Top Book of 2017 and selected by the ''Washington Post'' as one of the 50 best non-fiction books of 2017.
As a commentator on energy and climate issues, Goodell has appeared on NPR, MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, ABC, Fox News and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Awards and honors
* 2011 Grantham Prize (Award of Special Merit).
* 2012 Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, w ...
David R. Brower Award for excellence in environmental journalism.
* 2020 American Meteorological Society
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) is the premier scientific and professional organization in the United States promoting and disseminating information about the atmospheric, oceanic, and hydrologic sciences. Its mission is to advance t ...
Louis J. Battan Author's Award.
* 2021 Covering Climate Now Journalism Award
* 2022 New York Press Club The New York Press Club, sometimes ''NYPC'', is a private nonprofit membership organization which promotes journalism in the New York City metropolitan area. It is unaffiliated with any government organization and abstains from politics. While the c ...
Award
Fellowships
* 2016-201
New America National Fellow
* 202
Atlantic Council Senior Fellow
* 202
Guggenheim Fellow
Works
Books
* ''The Cyberthief and the Samurai: The True Story of Kevin Mitnick-And the Man Who Hunted Him Down'' (1996)
* ''Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family'' (2000)
* ''Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith'' (2002)
* '' Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future'' (2006)
* ''How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate'' (2010)
* ''The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World'' (2017)
Anthologies
* ''Best Business Writing 2012'' (Columbia Journalism Review Books, 2012)
* ''Best American Science Writing 2012'' (Ecco, 2012)
* ''Best American Science And Nature Writing 2022'' (Mariner, 2022)
Audiobooks
* ''The Big Melt: A Journey to Antarctica's Doomsday Glacier''
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goodell, Jeff
American magazine editors
American male journalists
Sustainability advocates
American non-fiction environmental writers
Living people
Writers from Sunnyvale, California
Year of birth missing (living people)
Place of birth missing (living people)
Activists from California