Rafe Pomerance first encountered climate change in the late 1970s while working as a clean-air lobbyist focused on ground-level pollution. A federal report on coal liquefaction warned that rising carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning could cause a significant and damaging increase in Earth’s temperature. He became convinced the generation should not warm the planet and spent the rest of his life working to prevent catastrophic warming. His efforts included pushing for the first congressional hearings on the issue and helping negotiate the Kyoto Protocol, a landmark United Nations treaty to curb greenhouse gas emissions. By his death, human carbon dioxide emissions had nearly doubled and global average temperatures had risen by more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit. He died of lung cancer at age 79.
"Yet here on the 66th page of a report on coal liquefaction, federal scientists were warning that surging emissions of carbon dioxide, caused mostly by burning fossil fuels, could cause a "significant and damaging" increase in Earth's temperature."
"Mr. Pomerance spent the rest of his life trying to avert catastrophic warming, leading the push for the first congressional hearings on the issue and helping negotiate the Kyoto Protocol, a landmark United Nations treaty to curb global greenhouse gas emissions."
""This was so much more profound than the issues I'd been working on," Mr. Pomerance told The Washington Post in 1989. "I remember thinking: What right does this generation have to warm up the Earth?""
"By the time of his death Thursday at 79, the annual amount of carbon dioxide released by humans had nearly doubled, and global average temperatures had risen by more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit. But nearly everyone on Earth has heard about the dangers of climate change."
Read at The Washington Post
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]