Goodell to return to Skidmore to debut new book
Jeff Goodell
Local author and environmental journalist Jeff Goodell will visit the Skidmore campus at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 14 to speak about his newest book, How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to fix Earth's Climate, scheduled for release in April. The Washington Post describes the book as a "vividly written, thoughtful book; Jeff Goodell helps readers explore the audacious question of whether humans can use technology to fix the very problem it's created."
Free and open to the public, the event will be in Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall.
In 2008, Goodell spoke to a packed audience in Gannett Auditorium about his earlier book Big Coal:The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future, published in 2006. Goodell is also the author of three books published before Big Coal. He also is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine. He lives in Saratoga Springs with his wife and three children.
In "How to Cool the Planet," Goodell investigates the viability of geoengineering: ambitious, mostly unproven strategies to "deliberately engineer the earth's climate to counteract global warming." Despite his promise to avoid the "wacky ideas proposed by wannabe geoengineers," Goodell still must ask the question: "at what point does the urgent and heroic goal of fixing the planet become just another excuse to make a quick buck?" In a genre dominated by doomsday scenarios, Goodell's treatment is refreshingly lighthearted, but two questions haunt him: "What kind of person dreams of engineering the entire planet? and Can we trust him?" He warns, "Technology has taken us farther away from nature, not drawn us closer to it," and his provocative account achieves a fine balance between the inventor's enthusiasm and the scientist's skepticism.
Goodell's lecture will be followed by a book-signing in the lobby outside of Gannett.
This event is co-sponsored by the Environmental Action Club and the Environmental Studies Program, and it is a precursor to Skidmore's April 24 Earth Day Celebration and music festival.
