Longtime Kalorama Triangle resident, a ‘dauntless warrior,’ continues his 40-year fight against climate change

An Earth warrior lives among us. Nestled near some thick trees in the Kalorama Triangle neighborhood is the home of Rafe Pomerance and his wife, Lenore.

“We’ve lived in the same house since 1975,” Rafe said. Forty-four years, three kids and seven grandchildren later, and he still enjoys fulfilling his life’s work in DC.

Pomerance has spent the last 40 years with one overarching goal — “putting climate change on the global agenda.” While most of the world rested blissfully unaware, Pomerance was one of the earliest proponents of taking climate change seriously. In 1979, while sitting in his Capitol Hill office flipping through pages of an Environmental Protection Agency report on coal, Pomerance — then the deputy legislative director of Friends of the Earth — made the realization that would propel the rest of his career: The use of fossil fuels was damaging the Earth’s atmosphere.

“I remember sitting in my office thinking, ‘This can’t be true. This can’t happen,’” Pomerance said, relaying the horror he felt.

That bit of knowledge was the catalyst for his life’s work fighting tirelessly to make others aware of the damaging effects of climate change. Specifically targeting members of Congress and others with power, he has urged domestic and world leaders to pursue and implement long-term solutions. His research and work have been so impactful that last August they were the predominant element in Nathaniel Rich’s long-form New York Times article, Losing Earth.

“I’ve always loved the outdoors,” Pomerance said. “I grew up on an estate and next to it had a park, and I would walk through the woods — a lot of times alone.”

Pomerance grew up in Cos Cob, a small neighborhood in Greenwich, Connecticut. His attraction to political activism could be attributed to his activist parents: His father was involved in state and local politics, and his mother fought for the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of the ‘60s. The interest in environmental protections extended to the rest of his family as well: His older sister worked on local initiatives, and his aunt wrote books on conservation.

That fight-for-what’s-right energy that he grew up on has remained with him throughout his life. As an undergraduate at Cornell University, Pomerance was a part of the anti-Vietnam War movement.

“I used to come down here [to DC] for a lot of marches,” Pomerance said of his college years. As a history major and lover of debate, he wasn’t sure what he would do with his life. His first thought: become a lobbyist in DC.

“When I got out of school, if you didn’t do something that could grant you deferment, you could be drafted,” Pomerance said. Unfortunately, he said, his brief stint with AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) did not exempt him from a draft physical. He was ultimately granted conscientious objector status and excused from fighting in the Vietnam War. In 1970, his dreams of lobbying in DC came true.

“He’s not interested in talking, he’s interested in doing,” said Christina DeConcini, the director of government affairs at World Resources Institute and Pomerance’s friend and colleague. “When I first met him, he wanted to know if I was the kind of person that would deliver on stuff, and I am. I think that’s why I loved him so much. No one had ever actually asked me that before.”

Pomerance’s first significant opportunity to prove exactly how much he could deliver came with his work through the National Clean Air Coalition, which he founded in 1973. In his 10 years with the organization, he was at the forefront of helping to push a number of notable environmental bills, including the “coal conversion law,” a landmark 1978 measure that dealt with the use of coal and burning of fossil fuels.

“Congress began a comprehensive review of the Clean Air Act in 1975,” Pomerance said. “That’s where we went big-time, because this was a fight over the future of probably the most important environmental statute in the United States.”

Another notable milestone took place for Pomerance in 1975: He got married. He met Lenore in the early ’70s when they both worked for the Urban Environment Conference under Democratic Sen. Philip Hart of Michigan. It was during this time that his two passions, debate and environmentalism, intertwined.

“He has a deep commitment to environmental issues on a broad front,” said Gus Speth, founder of the World Resources Institute and Pomerance’s longtime friend. “He has an unusual ability to tackle a problem from a different angle.” Pomerance served under Speth as a senior associate for climate change and ozone depletion policy from 1985 to 1993 before leaving for a post in the Clinton administration as deputy assistant secretary of state for environment and development, staying there until 1999.

With an insatiable passion for protecting the Earth and a strong knowledge of politics, the 6-foot-tall Pomerance was a force to be reckoned with. Not much can stand in his way once he sets his mind to accomplishing a goal. Since first learning about global warming in 1979, Pomerance has worked continually with various environmental groups and members of Congress to spread awareness and find solutions. Friends of the Earth, Arctic 21, the World Resources Institute, American Rivers and the Potomac Conservancy are just a few of the organizations Pomerance has helped lead. His current focus: the Arctic and Florida.

“The Arctic is rapidly unraveling and the permafrost is melting,” Pomerance said recently in a speech to the Cleveland Park Citizens Association. “When it thaws, it releases carbon dioxide in the form of methane.”

His other work focuses on Florida because “it is essential to how the climate change game will play out.” As a consultant with ReThink Energy Florida, Pomerance hopes to win over the state’s politicians and convince them of the importance of global climate change, as well as the detrimental effects of coral bleaching — the process by which too much warm water causes coral to expel necessary algae, eventually killing the coral.

At the Cleveland Park meeting, Pomerance explained a bit about his recent efforts fighting climate change and discussed his newfound fame as a result of Rich’s Losing Earth article. In publicizing the talk, the citizens association had described Pomerance as a “dauntless warrior to challenge and inspire us all.”

Pomerance indeed has an energy and a drive that suggests he will never stop fighting. “Climate change is a generational issue,” he said. “It’s a golden opportunity to pursue solutions and new technology.”

The New York Times article highlighting his work on the issue gained so much traction that an expanded version was published just this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux as a nonfiction book. lt will soon become a TV series. In the meantime, Pomerance will continue taking walks in his neighborhood and working to conserve the planet.