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Articles by Joseph Romm

Joseph Romm is the editor of Climate Progress and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

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  • Republicans have every reason to share ownership of the climate issue

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

    In Part I, we saw how conservatives were turning their backs on the moral issue of our time -- global warming.

    Here we'll examine the many reasons conservatives should share ownership of this issue. Global warming and its solutions involve issues that are important to conservatives, progressives, Independents and even political agnostics. For example:

    National security: "Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the United States," 11 retired admirals and generals concluded in a security analysis last April. "The increasing risks from climate change should be addressed now because they will almost certainly get worse if we delay."

    Jobs: The global need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is arguably the biggest entrepreneurial opportunity the United States has known. Billions of the world's people need access to clean energy, a market of unprecedented scale. Here in the United States, according to an analysis by the Management Information Services in Washington, D.C., energy efficiency and renewable energy can create 40 million jobs by mid-century, at skill levels stretching from entry level to the highly technical.

  • ‘Stop using so much oil’

    A great little story today in Tom Rick's Inbox, from the Washington Post's military correspondent:

  • Republican candidates are keeping their distance from climate change

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

    In recent years, conservatives have mastered the art of hijacking morality. They have positioned themselves as the champions of family values, faith and good old-fashioned patriotism. But on what some regard as the moral issue of our time, the party's presidential candidates are turning their backs.

    That issue is global warming.

    Al Gore is not the only prominent leader who considers climate change a moral issue. Three years ago, the National Association of Evangelicals issued its "Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility." It reads in part:

    We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part. Because clean air, pure water, and adequate resources are crucial to public health and civic order, government has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation. At about the same time, Christianity Today, an influential evangelical magazine, opined that "Christians should make it clear to governments and businesses that we are willing to adapt our lifestyles and support steps towards changes that protect our environment."

    The magazine endorsed the bipartisan global warming bill co-sponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman (I/D CT) and John McCain (R-AZ).

    Yet, the other Republican presidential candidates are keeping their distance from the issue as though it is their weird Aunt Ethel with halitosis.

  • NYT’s Revkin gives Inhofe a pass

    So Sen. James "global warming is a hoax" Inhofe (R-Okla.) issues a report in which he claims:

    Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming.

    "Padded" would be an extremely generous description of this list of "prominent scientists." Some would use the word "laughable" (though not the N.Y. Times' Andy Revkin, see below). For instance, since when have economists, who are pervasive on this list, become scientists, and why should we care what they think about climate science?

    I'm not certain a dozen on the list would qualify as "prominent scientists," and many of those, like Freeman Dyson -- a theoretical physicist -- have no expertise in climate science whatsoever. I have previously debunked his spurious and uninformed claims, although I'm not sure why one has to debunk someone who seriously pushed the idea of creating a rocket ship powered by detonating nuclear bombs! Seriously.

    Even Ray Kurzweil, not a scientist but a brilliant inventor, is on the list. Why? Because he apparently told CNN and the Washington Post:

    These slides that Gore puts up are ludicrous, they don't account for anything like the technological progress we're going to experience ... None of the global warming discussions mention the word "nanotechnology." Yet nanotechnology will eliminate the need for fossil fuels within 20 years ... I think global warming is real but it has been modest thus far -- 1 degree f. in 100 years. It would be concern if that continued or accelerated for a long period of time, but that's not going to happen.

    And people say I'm a techno-optimist. So Kurzweil actually believes in climate science -- rather than the reverse, as Inhofe claims -- but thinks catastrophic global warming won't happen because of a techno-fix that stops emissions. If wishes were horses ... everyone would get trampled to death. In the real world, energy breakthroughs are very rare, as we've seen, and it's even rarer when they make a difference in under several decades.

    Then we have the likes of this from Inhofe's list: