Joe Romm

Joseph Jacob Romm was born on June 27, 1960, in Middletown, New York, the youngest of three sons. His father, Avrum "Al" Romm (1926 to 1999), was the prize-winning managing editor of the Times Herald-Record, Middletown's daily newspaper. His mother, Ethel Grodzins Romm, was a journalist, columnist, author and designer who later ran an environmental technology company and chaired the Lyceum Society of the New York Academy of Sciences. His uncle was the MIT physicist Lee Grodzins, and his aunt was the library science expert Anne Grodzins Lipow. He grew up in a household steeped in journalism and science, a combination that shaped his later career as a scientist who wrote for the public.

Romm graduated from Middletown High School in 1978. He studied physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving a Bachelor of Science in 1982 and a Ph.D. in 1987. His doctoral research, supervised by the physicist and arms control expert Kosta Tsipis, dealt with nuclear submarine detection. In 1987 he received an American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellowship.

Romm began in national security policy. As a Congressional Science Fellow (1987) he advised Representative Charles E. Bennett. He was special assistant for international security at the Rockefeller Foundation from 1988 to 1990 and a researcher at the Rocky Mountain Institute from 1991 to 1993, where he co-authored work on energy-efficient building design. His 1992 book The Once and Future Superpower and his 1993 Council on Foreign Relations study Defining National Security: The Nonmilitary Aspects argued for a broader view of security.

From 1993 to 1998 he served at the U.S. Department of Energy, first as special assistant for policy and planning, then as principal deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, and in 1997 as acting assistant secretary. He oversaw the 1997 study Scenarios of U.S. Carbon Reductions.

After government he founded the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions and was a principal of the Capital E Group. His 2004 book The Hype About Hydrogen made him a leading critic of hydrogen cars and an early champion of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. In 2006 he joined the Center for American Progress as a senior fellow and founded Climate Progress, which became one of the most widely read climate blogs in the world; he contributed to it until 2019. He was chief science advisor to the Emmy-winning series Years of Living Dangerously (2014 and 2016), co-founded and edited Front Page Live (2019), and from 2023 was a senior research fellow at the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. He testified before congressional committees, including the House Committee on Science and Technology in 2007, and lectured widely.

Romm lived in Washington, D.C., from 1993. He was married to Patricia Sinicropi; they later divorced but remained friends, and they had a daughter, Antonia (Toni), who studied at the University of Chicago. In 2025 he and Antonia launched the podcast Decoding Taylor Swift: A Storytelling Revolution, which analyzed how Swift's lyrics persuade and connect. He loved comedy, contributing to The Washington Post's Style Invitational from 1994 to 2007, and he loved Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, about which he published an analysis in Hamlet Studies. His older brother David predeceased him; his brother Dan lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Romm argued that the world could not wait for technological breakthroughs to solve climate change and should instead "deploy existing and near-term low-carbon technologies as fast as is humanly possible." He called for a "WWII-style approach," sharply increased spending on clean energy, an end to new coal plants, rapid gains in energy efficiency and limits on carbon dioxide emissions. He was skeptical of hydrogen cars, carbon offsets, direct air capture, bioenergy with carbon capture and small modular nuclear reactors, which he saw as distractions or false promises. He believed the media underreported the speed and seriousness of warming, and that scientists needed to communicate with rhetoric and storytelling rather than neutral technical language.

The New York Times wrote that many credited Romm's all-in approach, using whatever practical solutions were available, with shaping climate policy during the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and his long advocacy of electric cars over hydrogen proved prescient. Climate Progress set a model for advocacy journalism online, and his book Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know became a standard primer. Bill McKibben called him "a tireless foil to the right-wing disinformation machine." Michael Mann said, "There's nobody else who brought all of these interlocking talents and proclivities together in the way that he did. That gave him such a unique voice, and it's a voice that we sorely could use today."

Elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2008). Named to Rolling Stone's 100 People Who Are Changing America (2009). Named one of Time's Heroes of the Environment (2009). Climate Progress named one of Time's Top 15 Green Websites and one of its 25 Best Blogs of 2010. Chief science advisor to Years of Living Dangerously, winner of the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. Included by The Weather Channel among the world's 25 most compelling voices on climate (2015). Ban Ki-moon Award for Environmental Leadership (2024).

Books: The Once and Future Superpower (1992); Defining National Security: The Nonmilitary Aspects (1993); Lean and Clean Management (1994); Cool Companies (1999); The Hype About Hydrogen (2004, revised 2025); Hell and High Water (2006); Straight Up (2010); Language Intelligence (2012); Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know (2015); How to Go Viral and Reach Millions (2018). Film and television: Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006); 60 Minutes (2009, on clean coal); chief science advisor to Years of Living Dangerously (Showtime 2014, National Geographic 2016). He gave TEDx talks at Asbury Park and Tralee and co-hosted the podcast Decoding Taylor Swift (2025). He wrote for Nature, Science, Scientific American, Foreign Affairs, Time, The New York Times, The Washington Post and many others.

Romm was known for combative, sometimes sarcastic critiques, aimed not only at climate deniers and the fossil fuel industry but at journalists and allies he felt underplayed the urgency of the crisis. Former New York Times climate reporter Andrew Revkin recalled: "If anything I did struck him as being too nuanced or wrong, he would pounce on it. I'd write 500 words, and he'd write 2,000 words." His views on hydrogen drew dissent from some transportation researchers, and he publicly debated climate skeptics such as Marc Morano. Roger Pielke Jr., with whom he had many public exchanges, wrote after his death that through those interactions Romm "taught me to sharpen my arguments."

Joe Romm died on September 14, 2026, in Washington, D.C., at the age of 66. The Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media announced his death on September 18, 2026, with a family obituary written by his cousin Dean Grodzins, which said he died unexpectedly at his home. In The New York Times obituary published on October 6, 2026, his former wife Patricia Sinicropi said he had struggled with mental health issues for several years and had died by suicide. His family asked that gifts in his memory go to Moms Clean Air Force, and a celebration of life is planned for the spring. If you or someone you know is struggling, in the US you can call or text 988.