Articles by Joseph Romm

Conservative blog doesn’t read studies it writes about

As discussed last week, Planet Gore's Sterling Burnett was upset with the media for supposedly ignoring "the recent reports by MIT and the CBO [PDFs] detailing the substantial costs and regressive nature of the costs that are estimated to arise if any of the current domestic proposals restricting carbon emissions to combat global warming are enacted."

Given that the MIT report in fact concluded the exact opposite of what Sterling claimed -- and given the fact that the National Review typically doesn't complain about the regressive nature of, say, tax cuts for the wealthy -- I'm guessing you won't be surprised to learn that the CBO report also comes to a different conclusion than Sterling claims.

All about hydrogen

Probably half the media queries I get concern hydrogen -- thanks to my last book, The Hype about Hydrogen. Yesterday's New York Times Magazine had an exceedingly long article, "The Zero-Energy Solution," on a solar-hydrogen home. The author refers to me as "an environmental pragmatist," no doubt because I don't automatically embrace every environmental solution that comes along, but judge each on its technical and practical merit.

I have written a number of articles arguing that hydrogen has been wildly overhyped as an energy and climate solution, when in fact it holds little promise of being a cost-effective greenhouse gas reduction strategy for at least the first half of the century, if not forever. Since ten years ago I ran the federal office that does hydrogen research, I am one of the go-to guys for a skeptical quote or two.

The two don’t mix well

This story deserves singling out because it is on an important but too-neglected subject -- the connection between energy and water.

On a new McKibben editorial

If this were the daily sunset you had gotten used to growing up, you would understand the hesitancy of even Bill McKibben, a renowned environmentalist, to okay wind turbines on the horizon, interfering with bird migration in order to generate electricity.

However, in an opinion article in which McKibben confesses his sentiment, entitled "One world, one problem," he ultimately resolves:

In this world, the threat to that landscape, and to those birds, comes far more from rapid shifts in temperature than from a few dozen towers.

McKibben goes on to write a testament to the gravity of climate change and its meaning for the environmental movement, which the existential call for action is uniting. No matter your top concern -- clean water, dolphin populations, crop survival, energy consumption -- there is a link to climate change and a bigger picture to keep in mind.

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