[1] Since the late 1970s, he has played a key role in raising awareness of the risks of climate change for United States policy-makers.
[6] After graduating from Cornell University, Pomerance served in the poverty program as a VISTA volunteer working for the Virginia Welfare Rights Organization.
[13] In this role he was involved in negotiations on forestry, GMO's, the international coral reef initiative, and climate change[14] leading to the Kyoto Protocol.
He teamed up with scientist Gordon MacDonald and began scheduling meetings with government officials to discuss the issue of climate change.
Their meeting with top White House scientist, Frank Press, prompted a National Academy of Sciences study, "Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment", informally known as the Charney report, the first National Academy assessment that attempted to quantify the impacts of increased CO2 on the climate.
He and Gus Speth convinced Senator John Chafee to hold the June 10 and 11, 1986 hearings[22] on “Ozone Depletion, the Greenhouse Effect, and Climate Change", with James Hansen being the key witness.
[26][2] In 2023 he articulated a vision of setting a limit on sea level rise, as a way of making climate change goals more tangible.
[28] His lobbying efforts in the 1980s were the subject of a 2018 New York Times article entitled "Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change".