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.
The relevant questions now are: How do we move beyond coal? How do we bring new jobs to the coal fields and retrain coal miners for other work? How do we inspire entrepreneurialism and self-reliance in people whose lives have been dependent on the paternalistic coal industry?
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.
The oil industry fought hard to keep Keystone alive, making wildly exaggerated claims that the pipeline - the country's largest infrastructure project - would create tens of thousands of jobs and decrease America's reliance on oil from the Middle East.
By burning fossil fuels, we are already dumping 30 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, which has a profound effect on the climate. So, like it or not, we're already messing with a system we don't understand.
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.
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.
When it comes to energy, cost isn't everything - but it's a lot. Everybody wants cheap power.
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.
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.
Climate scientists have long pointed to the Southwest as one of the places in the U.S. that is most vulnerable to global warming impacts, especially drought. And if there's one thing that even climate denialists don't dispute, dry things burn.
Among all the tests President Obama faced in his first term, his biggest failure was climate change.
Obama's record on climate issues is not all bad.
The first sign of whether Obama is serious about confronting the climate crisis will be revealed by how he organizes the White House.
President Obama is in no danger of being judged by history as an eco-radical.
To understand how quickly we're cooking the planet, we need good data. To have good data, we need good satellites.
If we drill the hell out of everything, including protected public lands and fragile regions like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, America can emerge as an 'energy superpower.'
In reality, studies show that investments to spur renewable energy and boost energy efficiency generate far more jobs than oil and coal.
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.
Mark Ruffalo, aka the Incredible Hulk, is the natural gas industry's worst nightmare: a serious, committed activist who is determined to use his star power as a superhero in the hottest movie of the moment to draw attention the environmental and public health risks of fracking.
