Russell Gold > Quotes

“We are fossil fuel addicts. What happens when drug addicts detox? They can be rash, cranky, even psychotic and dangerous. It would be good for the environment if the entire economy abruptly quit fossil fuels, but that's not realistic. I wouldn't want to be around if it ever happened. Perhaps it's best to think of natural gas like methadone. It's a way for an energy addicted society to get off dirtier fuels and smooth out the detox bumps.”
― Russell Gold, The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World

“Take the time to get it right. There'll be gas tomorrow night”
― Russell Gold, The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World

“Fracking is different. The risks of any single well are tiny compared to a nuclear power plant. But several hundred wells? Several thousand?”
― Russell Gold, The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World

“This book is about the ecosystem and inhabitants of the new United States, one that I sometimes call Frackistan. To trace its emergence, I will begin deep underground and follow the path of the hydrocarbon up and out of the rocks.”
― Russell Gold, The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World

“Thomas Edison had brought online the first coal-fired power plant. Power plants burned one billion tons of coal to generate more than half of the electricity used in the country.”
― Russell Gold, Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy

“One hundred and four nuclear power plants provided another 20 percent of the power, a steady output but one that was unlikely to change much. The last new order for a nuke in the United States had been in 1978.”
― Russell Gold, Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy

“Renewables were no longer the province of dreamers, people who wanted to divorce themselves from fossil fuels with a few solar panels and wind turbines.”
― Russell Gold, Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy

“I don't fear fracking. I fear carbon”
― Russell Gold, The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World

“the price of solar power would fall a decade later. The first indication of these falling prices occurred on April 1, 1999, although it wasn’t an April Fools’ joke.”
― Russell Gold, Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy

“Michael Zilkha, who owned half of a company called International Wind.”
― Russell Gold, Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy

“It could mean the difference between striking it rich and running out of cash.”
― Russell Gold, Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy

“Fracking ensures that the age of oil-and it's princely hydrocarbon cousin, the natural gas molecule-will not end because we have run out of fossil fuels. But it may end because burning these wonderful fuels puts the planet farther down a path we don't want to head down”
― Russell Gold