Articles by Joseph Romm
Joseph Romm is the editor of Climate Progress and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
All Articles
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America’s climate and energy future
This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.
A few weeks ago, one of the presidential candidates' advisors challenged a group of climate leaders to describe America's future. His challenge triggered a flurry of e-mails as we attempted to articulate a vision.We talked about carbon caps and price signals and new investments in R&D. That's fine, the advisor responded, but what it the vision? What is America's perfect future?
I'm not sure we ever satisfactorily answered this very good question, but I found myself trying to describe what America might look like 10, 20, and 40 years from now.
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On the leadership qualities the next president should possess
This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.
We are the nation we are because giants have walked among us. America was founded by giants. Others have appeared since to guide us through crises or to great things: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King. We have had leaders whose oratory has, sometimes in a single sentence, rallied the American people around their obligations of citizenship, the morality of equal rights, the spirit of exploration, and the compassion our blessed nation should show to those who have never known security or abundance.Are giants walking among us today? Are any of them in the present field of presidential candidates?
Polls indicate that most Americans agree the current president has demonstrated some qualities we do not want in the White House. I'd like to offer an unabashedly old-fashioned and idealistic answer about the qualities we do want, drawn from the Presidential Climate Action Plan.
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A new report lays a road map for creating green jobs while fighting the climate crisis
A major new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) provides a detailed roadmap for avoiding catastrophic global warming and restoring our energy security, while maintaining economic development.The report, "Capturing the Energy Opportunity: Creating a Low Carbon Economy," is by CAP's John Podesta, Kitt Batten, and Todd Stern. It is well worth reading, and I say that not because I am a senior fellow at CAP, but because the 88-page report lays out the most comprehensive set of plausible job-creating climate/energy policies I have seen.
The authors understand the scale of the problem:
The challenge we face is nothing short of the conversion of an economy sustained by high-carbon energy -- putting both our national security and the health of our planet at serious risk -- to one based on low-carbon, sustainable sources of energy. The scale of this undertaking is immense and its potential enormous.
The urgency of this issue demands a president willing to make the low-carbon energy challenge a top priority in the White House -- a centerpiece not only of his or her energy policy but also of his or her economic program -- to produce broad-based growth and sustain American economic leadership in the 21st century. This task is so encompassing it will demand that the incoming president in 2009 reorganize the mission and responsibility of all relevant government agencies -- economic, national security, and environmental.The report explores the crucial steps needed to meet the challenge:
