Okay, I am tooting my own horn here. But hey, this is a weblog — and I do bill this as “an insider’s view of climate science, politics and solutions,” so I think readers should know when a credible independent source validates my claim.
[Note: If anyone has come here from the U.S. News link, be sure to read “An Introduction to Climate Progress.”]
“Green Economy” is the focus of the April issue of U.S. News and World Report. Their website describes the piece I’m featured in as:
8 Top Washington PlayersThe most influential energy and environmental policymakers in the Obama era.
Inside, they list Lisa Jackson, Barbara Boxer, Lisa Murkowski, Steven Chu, Al Gore, Henry Waxman, Carol Browner, and me.
My profile (here) begins with the over-the-top Krugman comparison above, and continues with a pretty fair description, I think (with maybe one tiny asterisk):
Romm runs his own blog, climateprogress.org. He was a deputy assistant secretary of energy in the Clinton administration. Today, he’s a senior fellow at the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, an oft-cited expert on climate change issues, and a go-to witness at congressional hearings.
Romm’s positions are well defined and, in most cases, aggressively liberal. He holds that climate change is advancing more swiftly than most people think and than the mainstream media usually report. He has called for significantly ramping up government spending on clean energy technology, halting the construction of new coal plants, rapidly increasing the use of energy-efficient technologies, and imposing a cap-and-trade system to sharply limit carbon dioxide emissions.
Romm is a prolific writer and commentator. On his blog, he cuts through opposing arguments with an array of statistics, citations, cross-links, and sarcasm. One such headline: “Memo to T. Boone Pickens: Your Energy Plan Is Half-Brilliant, Half-Dumb.” He’s also a critic of the media for failing, in his view, to adequately inform the public of the connection between current events, like the devastating wildfires in Australia, and global warming, which he says must be addressed now. “I think that the media has to make clear what the vast majority of the scientific community says,” Romm says
I suppose my positions are, for some, “aggressively liberal” but I view them as “aggressively science-based.” It’s just that the conservatives have decided to be aggressively anti-science-based (see “Hill conservatives reject all 3 climate strategies and embrace Rush Limbaugh — what does that radicalism mean for Obama, progressives, and humanity?”).
Curiously, the print version gives me the sub-head “climate change expert” while the online version lists me as “top energy player.” The bottom line is that today, there really isn’t much separation between climate policy and energy policy.
ClimateProgress readers are definitely getting what they are paying for — but then that is true of almost every blog!
In any case, I definitely would not have received this recognition if it were not for this blog, whose success I owe in large part to you, the readers. So thank you!
Here is how part of the spread looks in the magazine: