Joseph Jacob Romm (June 27, 1960 – September 14, 2026) was an American researcher, author, editor, physicistBegley, Sharon. "Climate Pessimists Were Right", The Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2007 and climate expert.Garber, Kent. "Joe Romm, Influential Liberal Climate Change Expert and Blogger", U.S. News & World Report, March 31, 2009; and Lloyd Robin. "Geoengineering wars: Another scientist teases out a surprising effect of global deforestation". Scientific American, October 19, 2009 He advocated for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming and increasing energy security through energy efficiency and green energy technologies.About Us: Joseph Romm , Cleanhouston.org, Citizen’s League for Environmental Action Now, Houston, Texas, accessed July 14, 2016 In 2009, Rolling Stone magazine named Romm to its list of "100 People Who Are Changing America","The 100 People Who Are Changing America", Rolling Stone magazine, March 18, 2009 and Time magazine named him one of its "Heroes of the Environment (2009)", calling him "The Web's most influential climate-change blogger"."Heroes of the Environment 2009". Time magazine, September 2009; and Walsh, Bryan. "Heroes of the Environment 2009 – Activists: Joe Romm", Time magazine, September 2009.
In the 1990s, Romm served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy rising to Acting Assistant Secretary. At the Center for American Progress, in 2006, he founded the blog Climate Progress, which became part of the Think Progress website. Time magazine named Romm's blog one of the "Top 15 Green Websites".Roston, Eric. "Green Websites: Climate Progress". Time.com, April 17, 2008 (originally published in Time magazine in 2007), accessed November 29, 2010 In 2009, Thomas L. Friedman, in The New York Times, called Climate Progress "the indispensable blog", and Time included it in a list of the 25 "Best Blogs of 2010"."Best Blogs of 2010". Time magazine, June 28, 2010 Romm was the chief science advisor for the documentary series Years of Living Dangerously, which won the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. In 2019, he founded and served as the first editor-in-chief of the progressive news aggregator Front Page Live. Throughout these decades, he wrote on climate, energy security, as well as language and persuasion, for news sources and journals, and lectured at universities and other organizations. Romm ended his career as a senior research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, writing white papers about climate disinformation.
Romm published ten books and many articles on global warming, clean energy and communications. His 2006 book Hell and High Water summarizes observations and forecasts of climate change, discussed technology and policy solutions, and criticized political disinformation used to undermine climate science.Talbot, David. "Hell and Hydrogen" . Technology Review, March/April 2007 issue, accessed October 29, 2015 His 2015 book, Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know, covers basic climate science in a Q&A format. He also wrote books on how scientists and activists can communicate more persuasively to explain science and policy to the public. His 2012 book, Language Intelligence, concerns the effective use of rhetoric, and his 2018 book, How to Go Viral and Reach Millions, discusses how to tell scientific stories in ways that draw attention and connect with people emotionally. His 2025 revised edition of The Hype About Hydrogen decries what he calls "false promises" made by the fossil fuel industry and sets forth the solutions that Romm says can save the climate.
Biography
Early life and career Romm was born on June 27, 1960, and grew up in Middletown, New York, the youngest of three sons of Al Romm (1926–1999), managing editor of the Times Herald-Record newspaper,Al Romm was managing editor of the Times Herald-Record newspaper from the 1950s into the 1980s. Bedell, Barbara. "Record's First Editor Dies" , Times Herald-Record, December 1999 and Ethel Grodzins Romm, an author, journalist,"The Workmen's Circle to Honor Activists Ethel Grodzins Romm & Joe Romm at 2016 Winter Benefit", BroadwayWorld.com, October 20, 2016 project manager,Kawasaki, Guy. Hindsights: The Wisdom and Breakthroughs of Remarkable People, Beyond Words Publishing (1994) ; and Belludi, Nagesh. "Ethel Romm on Building Consensus", RightAttitudes.com, April 1, 2007, accessed July 12, 2016 CEO of an environmental technology companyThomson, Elizabeth A. "Lead detector wins R&D award", MIT News, December 13, 1995, accessed July 12, 2016 and, later, chair of the Lyceum Society of the New York Academy of Sciences."#IAmNYAS: Ethel Romm", The New York Academy of Sciences, October 24, 2016 His uncle is physicist Lee Grodzins,Obituary: Ethel Grodzins Romm, Times Herald-Record, December 4, 2021 and his aunt was library science expert Anne Grodzins Lipow."Lipow, Anne Grodzins", Obituary, SFGate.com, September 12, 2004, accessed July 12, 2016; and "Obituary: Anne Lipow", UC Berkeley News, October 14, 2004, accessed November 22, 2016 Romm graduated from Middletown High School in 1978.Epilogue yearbook, 1978, Middletown High School, p. 95
Romm attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1982 and a Ph.D. in 1987, both in physics.Romm, Joseph Jacob. "Applications of Normal Mode Analysis to Ocean Acoustic Tomography", American Doctoral Dissertations, Source code: X1987, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1987 (title information for Romm's Ph.D. dissertation), accessed November 29, 2010Directory of APS & AIP Congressional Science Fellows: 1987–88 APS.org, accessed November 28, 2010 In 1987, Romm was awarded an American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellowship for the U.S. House of Representatives, where he provided science and security policy advice on the staff of Representative Charles E. Bennett.
From 1988 to 1990, Romm worked as Special Assistant for International Security at the Rockefeller Foundation. From 1991 to 1993, he was a researcher at the Rocky Mountain Institute."Joe Romm" , EcoSpeakers.com, July 8, 2016 He co-authored the 1994 Rocky Mountain Institute Report, Greening the Building and the Bottom Line: Increasing Productivity Through Energy-Efficient Design.Lehrer, David. "Measuring Workplace Productivity: Key Variables and Future Directions", Center for the Built Environment, May 15, 2019 For the Global Environment and Technology Foundation, he performed the first environmental analysis of a system integrating cogenerating fuel cells, fly wheels, and power electronics aimed at achieving very high-availability power.Profile of Romm, Capital E, accessed November 29, 2010
In 1992, Romm published The Once and Future Superpower, a book about America's economic, energy and environmental security. () In 1993, he wrote Defining National Security: The Nonmilitary Aspects, for the Council on Foreign Relations. () His 1994 book, Lean and Clean Management, discusses management techniques that can reduce the impact of manufacturing and other industries on the environment while increasing productivity and profits.Wernick, Iddo K. "Book Review, Lean and Clean Management, Romm, J.", International Journal of Environment and Pollution 5(2/3):314-6 1995Allenby, Braden R. "Environmental Security: Concept and Implementation", International Political Science Review, Sage Journals, Volume 21, Issue 1, January 2000 The same year, he co-authored a paper for the ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings on "Policies to Reduce Heat Islands".Budhiraja, Bakul, et al. "Studying Surface and Canopy Layer Urban Heat Island at Micro-Scale Using Multi-Sensor Data in Geographic Information Systems", International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research, Volume 9, Issue 4, pp. 36–56, October 1, 2018 In 1999, Romm published Cool Companies: How the Best Businesses Boost Profits and Productivity by Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions.Profile of Romm, Capital E, accessed November 29, 2010; Biography of Romm and list of publications, Buildings.com, February 25, 2004, accessed November 28, 2010Reviews of Cool Companies can be found here. See also Hertsgaard, Mark. "Corporate Greenhouse" . The Nation, July 26, 1999, accessed at markhertsgaard.com, November 28, 2010
U.S. Department of Energy Romm served as Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, in charge of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy in 1997, as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the rest of the period from August 1995 through June 1998, and as Special Assistant for Policy and Planning from 1993 to July 1995."Bio of Joseph Romm, Ph.D", Buildings.com, February 25, 2004 Romm's projects there included supervising a 1997 comprehensive technical analysis of energy technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions cost-effectively, titled Scenarios of U.S. Carbon Reductions.Report: "Scenarios of U.S. Carbon Reductions: Potential Impacts of Energy-Efficient and Low-Carbon Technologies by 2010 and Beyond" . Interlaboratory Working Group, The Technology Evaluation Modeling and Assessment Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, September 1997 (click on "Acknowledgements"), accessed November 29, 2010
1998 to 2006 Romm was, for several years, the executive director and founder of the non-profit Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, which developed strategies for saving energy and cutting pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. He was also a principal of the Capital E Group, which consulted on technology assessment and sustainable design services for clean energy technologies.
During these years, Romm wrote widely on global warming and energy technology solutions. His 2004 book, The Hype about Hydrogen (expanded and updated in 2025), argues that delaying the implementation of current green technologies in favor of waiting for technological breakthroughs in hydrogen cars is a dangerous distraction from reducing greenhouse gas emissions.Romm, Joseph J. "The Hype About Hydrogen", Island Press, accessed July 14, 2016Romm, Joseph J. "The Hype About Hydrogen, Revised Edition", Island Press, accessed April 25, 2025 The book was named one of the best science and technology books of 2004 by Library Journal.Lautemann, Eva. "The Hype About Hydrogen – Book Review", Library Journal, April 1, 2004, accessed May 3, 2013 In reviewing the book, Daniel I. Sperling, then a member of California Air Resources Board, offered dissenting views.Ogden, Joan, D. Sperling, and Anthony Eggert, "Is there hope for hydrogen?", Chemical and Engineering News, Volume 82, Number 41, pp. 48-49, October 11, 2004. Also in 2004, Romm wrote the National Commission on Energy Policy's report, "The Car and Fuel of the Future",The Car and Fuel of the Future , 2004, reprinted in Energy Policy, vol. 34, issue 17 (November, 2006) pp. 2609–14, accessed 11 March 2009. which was rated the #1 Hottest Article on Energy Policy by ScienceDirect."Top 25 Hottest Articles" , ScienceDirect.com, January–March 2007, accessed 11 June 2009. He was also the principal investigator for the National Science Foundation project, Future Directions for Hydrogen Energy Research and Education (2004).Award Abstract, NSF.gov, January 29, 2004 Romm is interviewed in the 2006 documentary film Who Killed the Electric Car?, in which he argues that the government's "hydrogen car initiative" was a bad policy choice and a distraction that delayed the exploitation of more promising technologies, such as electric and hybrid cars that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase America's energy security.Curry, Andrew. "Berlin Rallies for a Tricky Oil Alternative". National Geographic News, May 12, 2010