Articles by Joseph Romm

True patriots would fight global warming

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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As you'll recall, Barack Obama made a controversial sartorial decision last October about what he will and will not wear on his lapel. He declared he will not wear one of those American flag pins that have become so popular among politicians since Sept. 11.

"I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest," he said while campaigning in Iowa. "Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great. Hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism."

His decision was instant red meat for a number of people who wear their patriotism on their sleeves as well as on their lapels. They questioned Obama's allegiance to his nation and to our troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

McCain reveals cynicism, hypocrisy with call for summer gas-tax holiday, energy budget freeze

Any remaining glimmer of hope that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) might be the principled, non-cynical politician to transform our energy policy and avoid the dual calamities of peak oil and climate catastrophe died today. The Associated Press reported that:

John McCain called Tuesday for the federal government to free people from paying gasoline taxes this summer ... aimed at stemming the public's pain now from the troubled economy.

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To help people weather the downturn immediately, McCain urged Congress to institute a "gas-tax holiday" by suspending the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and 24.4 cent diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

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Among other proposals, McCain said he would ... Suspend for one year all increases in discretionary spending for agencies other than those that cover the military and veterans ...

Sad. In fact, doubly sad.

Concentrated solar thermal power: a core climate solution

Other than energy efficiency (see here), I don't believe any set of technologies will be more important to the climate fight than concentrated solar power (CSP).

I have a long article on CSP in Salon: "The technology that will save humanity: The solar energy you haven't heard of is the one best suited to generate clean electricity for generations to come."

OK, maybe "will" should be "may help" (I'm an optimist, sue me!) and readers have heard about CSP for a while. But I do think CSP deserves much more attention:

It is the best source of clean energy to replace coal and sustain economic development. I bet that it will deliver more power every year this century than coal with carbon capture and storage -- for much less money and with far less environmental damage ...

How much less? Many industry experts told me CSP will likely deliver power for well under $0.10 per kilowatt hour fully installed in the next decade.

What is its market potential? I think it could be more than two wedges, which is several thouand gigawatts:

Why a carbon price beats technology breakthroughs

The decarbonization data makes clear that if you want to beat 450 ppm and avoid catastrophic climate impacts, a significant price for carbon (plus aggressive technology deployment) is much more important than technology breakthroughs.

That is a central point of this post. That is what I learned in the mid-1990s when I helped to run the billion-dollar office at DOE in charge of federal clean energy technology breakthroughs and deployment -- and had the chance to work with the top scientists and technology modelers at the national labs to figure out how we can cut emissions most quickly and cost-effectively.

The pursuit of the Holy Grail of multiple technology breakthroughs is, in fact, a side show -- and for many, like Bush/Luntz/Gingrich/Lomborg, that pursuit is meant as a complete rhetorical distraction to the public so we can continue to avoid action, as I have repeatedly blogged. It was specifically designed by conservative strategist Frank Luntz as a core delaying strategy.