Eric Pooley is senior vice president for strategy and communications at the Environmental Defense Fund. An award-winning writer and editor, he has served as chief political correspondent of Time, editor of Time Europe, managing editor of Fortune, and deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek.
Eric began his journalism career as a freelance reporter in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he was an award-winning feature writer, political columnist and senior editor for New York magazine. He joined Time in 1995 as its White House correspondent and went on to serve as the magazine’s chief political correspondent and national editor.
In 2002 Eric was named editor of Time Europe, the London-based international edition of Time, and three years later he became managing editor of Fortune, responsible for all global editorial operations of the magazine. In 2007 he left Time Inc. and began work on The Climate War. In 2009 he began writing a climate and energy column for Bloomberg News, and in February 2010 he was named deputy editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Eric’s work has been recognized with many awards and honors, including a 2001 National Magazine Award (for Time’s single-topic issue on the September 11 attacks, which he helped edit), the 1996 Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency (for his coverage of the Clinton Administration), and four Henry R. Luce awards from Time Inc. He is also a three-time finalist for the National Magazine Award in categories ranging from General Excellence (for his editorship of Fortune) to Public Service (for a Time cover story that temporarily shut down an unsafe nuclear power plant in Connecticut).
Eric has written about climate politics for Time, Slate, Bloomberg News and other publications. In the fall of 2008 he studied press coverage of the issue at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he was a Kalb Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. He was a featured commentator in Heat, the 2008 PBS Frontline global warming documentary, and has appeared on Nightline, Charlie Rose, The CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Larry King Live, Anderson Cooper 360, All Things Considered, and many other programs. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Brown University and lives with his wife and two daughters in New York.
How Much Would You Pay to Save the Planet?
The American Press and the Economics of Climate Change
Discussion Paper, Shorenstein Center on the Press. Politics and Public Policy
Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Fall 2008
Hangover Lingers From Copenhagen Climate Mosh Pit
Bloomberg News, December 21, 2009
Climategate Proves Sunlight Best Reply to Skeptics
Bloomberg News, December 1, 2009
Obama Needs China to Help Him Run Great Green Race
Bloomberg News, November 18, 2009
Freakonomics Guys Flunk Science of Climate Change
Bloomberg News, October 19, 2009
Exxon Works Up New Recipe for Frying the Planet
Bloomberg News, August 24, 2009
Why Warren Buffett Is Wrong About Cap and Trade
Bloomberg News, July 13, 2009
Warren Buffett carries plenty of weight in any debate — even when he gets it wrong.
Man Up, Climate Skeptics
Bloomberg News, June 16, 2009
So you still think global warming is bunk? An eco-Nazi plot to jack up your taxes and control the energy supply? Get over it, my friend. Move on.
‘Kill Bill’ Climate Strategy Plays Like Old Movie
Bloomberg News, May 11, 2009
At two of the most powerful business lobbies in America, the men in charge must be watching too many Quentin Tarantino movies.
Surprise—Economists Agree!
A consensus is emerging about the costs of containing climate change. So why is no one writing that?
The Big Money, February 11, 2009
Save the Economy, Save the Planet
A new politics of climate change for recessionary times
The Big Money, October 8, 2008
Why the Climate Bill Failed
Time Magazine, June 9, 2008
The Last Temptation of Al Gore
May 16, 2007
Author’s Bookshelf
- Introduction to the basics of climate science:
Spencer R. Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming, Harvard University Press, 2008. - Reportage from the front lines of global climate change:
Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, Bloomsbury, 2006. - A chilling look at our hotter future:
Mark Lynas, Six Degrees, National Geographic, 2008. - A deep dive into carbon’s place in the universe:
Eric Roston, The Carbon Age, Walker and Company, 2008. - The social history of the professional climate deniers:
- Investigative journalist Ross Gelbspan, The Heat is On, Perseus Books, 1997.
- Ross Gelbspan Boiling Point, Basic Books, 2004.
- George Monbiot, Heat, South End Press, 2007.
- Canadian activists James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore, Climate Cover- Up, Greystone, 2009.
- A broader discussion of the climate argument:
Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree about Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, 2009. - Go deeper into the Bush Administration’s climate disinformation tactics:
- Seth Shulman, Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration, University of California Press, 2006.
- Mark Bowen, Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming, Dutton, 2008.
- Fine primers on clean energy solutions:
- Earth: The Sequel by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn, W. W. Norton, 2008.
- Al Gore, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, Rodale, 2009.
- A deeply reported tour of the coal industry:
Jeff Goodell, Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future, Mariner, 2007. - A hard look at mountaintop removal mining:
Michael Shnayerson, Coal River, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. - A clear-eyed view of the technological solutions known as geoengineering, which will almost certainly need to be explored if humankind fails to reduce green house gas emissions:
Jeff Goodell, How to Cool the Planet, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. - For a powerful argument in favor of a new environmental strategy as well as sweeping redirection of economic activity:
James Gustave Speth, The Bridge at the End of the World, Yale University Press, 2008.