About the Author: William N. Rom MD, MPH, is Sol and Judith Bergstein Professor of Medicine, Departments of Medicine (Pulmonary Disease) and Environmental Medicine and director of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, director of the NYU Lung Cancer Biomarker Center, and director of the Chest Service and Environmental Lung Disease Laboratory at Bellevue Hospital Center. He recently was chair of the American Thoracic Society Environmental Health Policy Committee and on staff for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for the first global warming debate in fall 2003.