Joseph J. Romm Quotes

We created a way of raising standards of living that we can't possibly pass on to our children.

Conservative Denyers and Delayers are the main reason America lacks the consensus and the political will to take up the fight against catastrophic climate change.

The United States could dramatically reduce its carbon emissions per kilowatt-hour without raising its overall energy bill.

In 2003 ... the White House conspired with an oil-company funded think tank to block a major government scientific report that sought to spell out the dangers of climate change to Americans.

When people ask me what they should do, I reply, "Get informed, get outraged, and then get political."

Time is short. We have at most a decade to sharply reverse course.

By the end of the third decade of this century, all of American life - politics, international relations, our homes, our jobs, our industries, the kind of cars we drive - will be forever transformed by the climate and energy challenge.

If the politics of inaction and delay that have triumphed in this country continues for another decade, then Planetary Purgatory in the likely future facing our country before midcentury - probably in your own lifetime.

In 2005 ... Mumbai, India, saw that country's most intense recorded instance of rainfall - 3 feet of rain in twenty-four hours.

You must become a climate champion, a single-issue voter. You must take whatever action you can. You must use whatever influence you have wherever it would make a difference, even if it is only to educate the people around you.

Hurricane seasons with four or more super-hurricanes, those with sustained wind speeds of 131 mph or more will soon become the norm.

The world beyond 450 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the world that crosses carbon cycle tipping points that quickly take us to 1000 ppm, is a world not merely of endless regional resource wars around the globe. It is a world with dozens of Darfurs. It is a world of a hundred Katrinas, of countless environmental refugees

The great political tragedy of our time is that conservative leaders in America have chosen to use their superior messaging and political skills to thwart serious action on global warming.

Replacing half of the U.S. ground-transport fuels with hydrogen from wind power by 2050, for example, might require 1,400 gigawatts of advanced wind turbines or more ... replacing those fuels with electricity might require less than 400 GW.

We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks - water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land - and not by generating renewable flows.

Conservatives ... are so opposed to government regulations that they are skeptical of anyone who identifies a problem that requires regulatory solutions - and they are inherently accepting of those who downplay such problems.

Conservatives have adopted messaging strategies that allowed them to succeed politically even with policies that don't have strong popular support. Indeed, that is one reason they turned the tide against President Obama in 2010 - simple, relentless messaging. Similarly, those who deny the reality of climate science have made use of the best rhetorical techniques. Those seeking to inform the public about the very real dangers of a warming climate will need to learn the lessons of the best communicators if they are to overcome the most well-funded disinformation campaign in history.

The coal plants that will be built from 2005 to 2030 will release as much carbon dioxide as all of the coal burned since the industrial revolution more than two centuries ago.

If Americans in 2100 came to see 12 meters sea-level rise as inevitable by 2200, who can even begin to fathom how the nation would respond?

Protecting dozens of major coastal cities from future flooding will be challenging enough-rebuilding major coastal cities destroyed by super-hurricanes will be an almost impossible task.

Since 1955 the oceans have absorbed roughly twenty times more heat than the atmosphere.

Do believe that if we fail to act in time, it will be the single biggest regret any of us has at the end of our lives.