Straight Up: America’s Fiercest Climate Blogger Takes on the Status Quo Media, Politicians, and Clean Energy Solutions
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Product Description
In 2009, Rolling Stone named Joe Romm to its list of “100 People Who Are Changing America.” Romm is a climate practiced, physicist, energy consultant, and ex- official in the Department of Energy. But it’s his influential blog, one of the “Top Fifteen Green Websites” according to Time magazine, that’s caught national attention. Climate change is far more urgent than people know, Romm says, and traditional media, scientists, and politicians are missing the tale. Straight Up draws on Romm’s most vital posts to clarify the dangers of and solutions to climate change that you won’t find in newspapers, in journals, or on T.V. Compared to coverage of Jay-Z or the latest philandering politician, climate change makes up a touchingly tiny share of news reports. And when journalists do try to tackle this complex issue, they regularly lack the background to tell the full tale. Despite the dearth of reporting, polls show that two in five Americans reflect the press is really exaggerating the threat of climate change. That gives Huge Oil, and others with a vested interest in the status quo, a huge opportunity to mislead the public. Romm cuts through the misinformation and presents the truth about humanity’s most dire threat. His analysis is based on sophisticated knowledge of renewable technologies, climate impacts, and government policy, written in a style everyone can know. Romm shows how a 20 percent reduction in global emissions over the next quarter century could improve the economy; how we can replace most coal and with what technologies; why Sarah Palin wears a polar bear pin; and why controversial, emerging technologies like biochar have to be part of the solution. The essential solution, Romm argues, is larger than any individual equipment: it’s citizen action. Lacking public pressure, Washington and industry don’t budge. With it, our grandkids might just have a habitable place to live.
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Between climate deniers who will stretch the truth so far out of whack to kill any effort to lower greenhouse gases, to the media who constantly demonstrate incompetence when covering climate change, Straight Up is a welcome relief. Joe Romm brings a strong scientific background in climate change research to bear on the efforts by the right to mislead the public into doing nothing to stop the most serious threat to our ability to survive as a species. And he provides an equally compelling critique of the ineptitude among members of the media to accurately report the reality that climate change is caused by humans.
Joe Romm addresses every issue of contention with clarity and a facts.
Drawn from the most influential climate change blog around ([...]), Straight Up gives you the real deal. It is both scientifically grounded and easily accessible. Straight Up is a must read for anyone that wants to be serious about learning the facts related to climate change.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
If you haven’t bought or read Straight Up, please do so immediately. Joe Romm has an incredible ability to stay fact-driven and optimistic even as the anti-science ideologues become even more entrenched. It is this passionate science-based activism (and similar efforts by so many others) that may preserve a livable climate for our children and grandchildren.
My favorite aspect of the book is Romm’s dedication to realism and honesty. Romm states, “Affection for the planet is unrequited. We need to focus on saving ourselves.” By separating himself and climate-change from traditional environmentalism, Romm is able to focus on the right challenge: preserving a livable climate for humans. Combined with the “why I blog” section of the book, Romm makes it clear that he and many additional Climate-change activists are not driven by an environmental or liberal idealism, but rather the rational and science-based understanding of the consequences of business-as-usual (i.e. worst-case-scenario.) We can only hope this kind of inspection of both the science and the solutions (and the barriers to each) will become more enveloping, and finally transform the undeserved perception of “alarmism.”
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
In the footsteps of George Lakoff’s Don’t Reflect of an Elephant, about GOP language games and how to counter them, Jospeh Romm shows us how to use the Very ancient Greek art of speechifying to debunk the perfect irrationality coming out of the GOP today, as regards the urgency of fitting climate change, which does not automatically mean “hotter everywhere all the time”, but certainly does mean new and treacherous extremes in weather. Don’t tell me you haven’t veteran some in the last few years.
Republicans have successfully sown a lot of uncertainty, recently, that the planet’s warming is man-made. Here he debunks climate-change deniers like Bjorn Lumborg and Sarah Palin, and shows you how to do it, too; although mostly it is directed at scientists who know the evidence intimately, which to be honest is not all of us.
Joe is a trained climate physicist from MIT who served in the Clinton administration
as assistant deputy energy secretary and also written many books. He spent some years showing companies how they could retrofit their companies(or, I reflect, erect new ones) to be more energy well-organized and in every case they took a profit in doing so! We do want to give credit to persons in business, some among the GOP, who know the need for clean energy.
In this book, Romm has married both arts of science and fine writing.
The intro refers back to George Orwell’s Essays on Politics and the English Language,
particularly the chapter, “Why I Write”. Joe calls his, “Why I blog.” Kudos to him for opening to readers completely about his motivations so you know exactly where he’s coming from and that his not just a political axe to grind. Climate Change, as he says, is a bipartisan issue.
There’s a excellent section on the science of the most energy well-organized car(hybrid plug-ins), the feasibility of the different new, but not intolerably new, forms of energy, including a wild(but not new) one I’d never heard of, CSP, which involves using mirrors to catch the sun’s light and direct it into making energy. But he discusses most
of the alternative forms out there as wedges of a pie that would get us to be much less dependent on oil. And it must be done yesterday but there’s still hope.
Romm also points out that the media did a terrible job of assessing the outcome of Copenhagen. They called that international summit on climate change underwhelming. In fact, a lot went on! “Read all about it.”
It also goes lacking adage that media too regularly feels that it has to present both sides of every tale- even when only one side is supported by the facts.
But Romm says it with a vengeance.
This book comes out at an auspicious time when, as soon as the CFPA bill is settled(not that we’re exactly sanguine about its passage, especially as Scott Brown(R-MA), supposedly his own man, has stepped up the speechifying against it), next on Obama’s agenda is the Climate and Clean Energy Bill, we hope and expect within a week or so. What a coincidence.
Romm’s a legendary blogger now, doesn’t need me to tout his book.
If you want to keep up with his blog, it’s at climateprogress dot org
It is also “convenient” to follow him, from there, on Twitter.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5