Rafe Pomerance, a friend to many at Resources for the Future, passed away last month. He was a longtime advocate for climate policy and played a major role in shaping policymakers’ early understanding of climate risks.
Rafe Pomerance died on May 21, 2026. Many at Resources for the Future (RFF), including me, will dearly miss his friendship, brilliant commentary, sincere engagement, dazzling smile, and ferocious support of cost-effective environmental protection. Above all, he was a pivotal influence in climate policy circles in Washington, DC.
In 1973, while working for the Urban Environment Conference under Senator Phil Hart (D-MI), Pomerance launched the National Clean Air Coalition, serving as its coordinator for five years. He joined Friends of the Earth in 1975 as a lobbyist for clean air and went on to serve as its president from 1980 to 1984. In the late 1970s, while at Friends of the Earth, he came across a government report on coal liquefaction that warned carbon dioxide emissions could cause a “significant and damaging” increase in Earth’s temperature. According to the Washington Post obituary for Pomerance, he told the paper in 1989, “This was so much more profound than the issues I’d been working on … I remember thinking: What right does this generation have to warm up the Earth?”
From that point on, Pomerance devoted himself almost entirely to climate change. Knowing that scientific papers alone would not galvanize politicians, he spent much of the 1980s persuading members of Congress to hold hearings, and he testified himself in 1984, warning that once the consequences of climate change became clear, they would be virtually irreversible.
From 1986 to 1993, Pomerance was Senior Associate for Climate Change and Ozone Depletion at the World Resources Institute. In the 1990s, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment, in which capacity he led the US Department of State team that negotiated the first international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions: the Kyoto Protocol. He also was a central figure in Nathaniel Rich’s widely read book Losing Earth, which details the efforts of people like Pomerance to bring climate change into the national consciousness during the 1980s.
Pomerance was never part of the RFF staff, but he was a frequent presence and did valuable work with several RFF researchers, including research on an approach to carbon pricing that became widely known as the “safety valve.” In the context of a greenhouse gas control system with emissions trading, the safety valve would constrain the extent to which carbon allowance prices could rise, thereby limiting potential economic impacts. Many in the environmental community opposed the safety valve on the grounds that it would encourage too little reduction in carbon dioxide. Undaunted by that criticism, Pomerance embraced the safety valve as a practical way to move climate policy forward in a fractious political environment. He advocated for the approach both as a domestic policy option and as a mechanism to be incorporated into an international agreement. He continued to support the safety valve after stepping down from his State Department role and returning to work with nongovernmental organizations.
Those of us at RFF who interacted with Pomerance remember him as someone who was always willing to help make an idea stronger, even when it was controversial. He pushed for progress—in policy, in personal connection, and in life—with unusual energy and generosity. He also was an avid nature enthusiast who spent many hours in his beloved rural West Virginia. As a nonsmoker, his death from lung cancer can be considered a possible consequence of the fossil fuel combustion about which he had long warned. He will be deeply missed, both for what he accomplished and for the warmth and vitality he brought to the people around him.
