Articles by Joseph Romm

Act now with clean energy or face 6 degrees C warming; cost is not high; media blows story

When the normally conservative International Energy Agency agrees with both the middle of the road IPCC and more ... progressive voices like mine, it should be time for the world to get very serious, very fast on the clean energy transition. But when the media blows the story, the public and policymakers may miss the key messages of the stunning new IEA report, "Energy Technology Perspectives, 2008" (executive summary here).

You may not have paid much attention to this new report once you saw the media's favorite headline for it: "$45 trillion needed to combat warming." That would be too bad, because the real news from the global energy agency is

1. Failing to act very quickly to transform the planet's energy system puts us on a path to catastrophic outcomes.
2. The investment required is "an average of some 1.1 percent of global GDP each year from now until 2050. This expenditure reflects a re-direction of economic activity and employment, and not necessarily a reduction of GDP." In fact, this investment partly pays for itself in reduced energy costs alone (not even counting the pollution reduction benefits)!
3. The world is on the brink of a renewables (and efficiency) revolution. Click figure to enlarge:

McCain says Reid chose ‘to put politics above policy’

McCain's statement on Lieberman-Warner said this:

... it appears that for now, the Senate, at the direction of the Majority Leader, will choose to put politics above policy, and Congress will fail to act yet again on this critical issue.

You cannot be serious! The people who put politics above policy were McCain's fellow conservatives, who

• Forced 30 hours of pointless debate
• Forced a 9-hour reading of the bill
• Demagogued the gasoline and energy price issue over and over again
• Denied the reality of climate science
• Voted to block the bill from moving forward

That's why Congress failed to act. And, of course, Bush said he would veto the bill anyway. Where or when did the straight talk express derail?

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Post-post mortem on Boxer-Lieberman-Warner debate

OK, so the long-dead B-L-W bill got propped up and dragged around for a few days. (Tagline: B-L-W may be dead, but it's the life of the party!) But I think the debate was quite useful for two reasons:

1. The opponents of (even modest) action played and overplayed their cards. Now we know that the health and well-being of future generations is of no interest in them. Now we know what their primary arguments will be. This is the opportunity for progressives and moderates and hopefully President Obama to design a better messaging strategy -- and to get pro cap-and-trade businesses to weigh in.
2. The many flaws in the bill (other than the fact it wouldn't actually save the climate) were exposed: not enough money returned to taxpayers, too much money given away to too many groups, too complicated, your flaw here -- I'd very much like to hear your ideas for how the bill could be simplified and improved.

I will be offering my recommendations for what a better bill would look like later this month. Clearly, the bill should be designed to achieve more reductions and to be easier to explain and defend.

After all, the original Weekend at Bernie's was kind of fun and made money. But did anybody actually see (and enjoy) Weekend at Bernie's 2? We don't want a lame remake next year.

Is NYT’s Revkin pushing unjustified ‘balance’ in the Senate climate debate coverage?

I like and respect Andy Revkin a great deal. He is one of the best reporters on climate and certainly the most prolific climate journalist now that he has his Dot Earth blog. But I must take exception to his recent posting, "Climate Debate: Democracy In Action?"

You would never know from his post that one side in the debate was desperately trying to save future generations from catastrophic warming and the other side was simply doing shameless political posturing. Here is how it opens: