Dr. Joseph Romm, a leading American voice on climate change who was named “The Web’s most influential climate-change blogger” by Time magazine in 2009, will spend a week at Stetson University this month and give a free public talk on Wednesday, Feb. 23.

Romm’s lecture, “Jobs in a Globally Warming World: A vision of our economy in a world with significantly different climate,” will be at 7 p.m. Feb. 23 in the Stetson Room of the Carlton Union Building, 131 E. Minnesota Ave., DeLand. A book-signing will follow the talk; his book Hell and High Water will be available for purchase.

Romm is editor of the Climate Progress blog, which is dedicated to providing the progressive perspective on climate science, climate solutions, and climate politics, and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

In 2009, Time named him one of the “Heroes of the Environment″ and “The Web’s most influential climate-change blogger.”

Romm was acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy during the Clinton Administration where he directed $1 billion in research, development, demonstration, and deployment of clean energy and carbon-mitigating technology. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. In 2008, Romm was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for “distinguished service toward a sustainable energy future and for persuasive discourse on why citizens, corporations, and governments should adopt sustainable technologies.”

In 2007, Time named Climate Progress one of the “Top 15 Green Websites,” writing that “Romm occupies the intersection of climate science, economics and policy…. On his blog and in his most recent book, Hell and High Water, you can find some of the most cogent, memorable, and deployable arguments for immediate and overwhelming action to confront global warming.”

In 2009, Rolling Stone named Romm No. 88 on its list of The 100 “people who are reinventing America” calling him “America’s fiercest climate-change activist-blogger.” U.S. News & World Report named Romm one of the eight “most influential energy and environmental policymakers in the Obama era.”

Romm is visiting Stetson as part of the Council of Independent Colleges’ Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows Program, which sends experts in different fields to colleges each year. He will spend a week working with students and faculty in classes, workshops and meetings. More than 200 colleges and universities have participated in the Visiting Fellows program since it began in 1973 and Stetson has had several Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows since the 1990s.

His lecture at Stetson is co-sponsored by Stetson’s Office of Academic Affairs and Values Council. The theme for this year’s Values Council lectures is: “Change: What? Why? How?”