Articles by Joseph Romm

Will climate change become the hottest issue of the presidential race?

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

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In addition to his Oscar and Nobel Prize, Al Gore may be in line for the title of Prognosticator of the Year. Last January while I was attending his training program in Nashville, Gore predicted that by the time of the 2008 presidential election, climate change would be the hottest issue in the race.

That prediction hasn't come true yet, but things are moving that way. Climate change is emerging like a tropical storm building to Category 5. It may become the issue that most clearly defines the candidates' courage, vision, ability to unify the nation, and willingness to be honest with the American people.

"The most remarkable thing about the environmental debates taking place in this year's presidential campaign is that they're occurring at all," Time magazine reported this week. "Once the stuff of a few hug-the-planet bromides in green states like Vermont and Oregon, the environment is one of the hot topics of the 2008 campaign."

New report examines the impact of climate change on national security

John Podesta and Peter Ogden of the Center for American Progress have written a chapter titled "Global Warning: The Security Challenges of Climate Change," for a report called "The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change." They describe their work as follows:

Pollution prevention and preparing for the future

The final part of "MidEast Oil Forever?" (subs. req'd) discusses pollution prevention.

I think the discussion still holds up, and as you can see, I am no Johnny-come-lately to the global warming issue. What is particularly sad about the Bush administration, is that while they eschew the anti-clean-technology rhetoric of Reagan and Gingrich -- indeed claim to be pro-clean-technology, they have gutted some of the best clean tech and energy efficiency programs. In particular, they have slashed the budget for the Energy Department's major pollution prevention effort, the Industries of the Future program (described briefly in the article), and the president has proposed zeroing it out entirely.

This administration's energy and climate policy make the final sentence of this article, sadly, as true as ever: "Only a misbegotten ideology could conceive a blunder of such potentially historic proportions."

Here is what we wrote:

The renewables revolution

After the introduction and an explanation of "The Coming Oil Crisis" and "Abandoning the Solution," the next part of "MidEast Oil Forever?" (subs. req'd) is a discussion of the "The Renewables Revolution."

One of the great energy tragedies of the 1980s is that President Reagan gutted the renewable energy R&D budget (and the entire clean energy budget) -- a stunning 90% cut in key technologies -- just as America was assuming technological and marketplace leadership in core areas like wind and solar power.

One of the great energy tragedies of the 1990s is that the Gingrich Congress blocked the Clinton administration's efforts to significantly ramp up renewable and clean energy funding, which could have restored U.S. leadership in technologies that even then were obviously going to be the foundation of major job-creating industries in the coming century.

Here is what we wrote on renewables: