Another One for Confirmation. Tax Cheat or Even Worse? Not to Worry, He Likes to Fish

"Holdren’s predictions about global warming, illustrated in riveting charts and graphs, helped ex-Vice President Gore win an Oscar for his 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Holdren also helped persuade Ford Motor Co. and ConocoPhillips Co. executives to accept that climate change caused by gas emissions threatened to raise sea levels and harm crops. His slides pop up frequently in other people’s speeches.

At age 64, Holdren now is taking on his toughest assignment: getting the American public and Congress to curb fossil fuel use. Barack Obama has named Holdren as assistant to the president for science and technology as well as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, a post for which he will face a Senate confirmation hearing on Feb 12.

The White House “is the place where he ought to be right now, trying to save the world,” said Paul Ehrlich, author of “The Population Bomb” (Ballantine, 1968), a manifesto that predicted disaster from depletion of the Earth’s resources. Holdren is “absolutely brilliant,” Ehrlich said.

...Holdren’s areas of expertise are climate change, alternative energy and arms control. At the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, scheduled for December in Copenhagen, the U.S. will be urged to adopt carbon-dioxide limits that 183 countries accept already, said Paul Epstein, an environmental researcher at Harvard....

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