WolfeNotes.com

Keep It Green Ignores Climate Change

Fear and Loathing in the Garden State

The Fat Man in the Front Office Casts a Wide Shadow

(source: NJ DEP - 2009 Report on GWRA - see below for link)

The successful Koch Brothers’ funded NJ campaign by Americans for Prosperity to provide cover for Gov. Christie to kill RGGI is the model for the current ongoing national preemptive attack, targeted on upcoming EPA regulations announced by President Obama. With Christie, Koch’s, and climate change in the national media spotlight, will some intrepid reporter connect the dots? ~~~ Bill Wolfe

This is getting to be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Lies and errors of omission can be as important – sometimes more  so – than those of commission.

Earlier this week, I wrote about how the “Forest Stewardship” bill failed both rural and urban NJ by failing to even consider urban forestry and  “afforestation”, i.e..increasing the amount of NJ’s forested lands, as opposed two cutting them down.

Prior to that, I ranted about glaring errors by the Keep It Green Coalition in advocating for a dedicated [new] source of open space funding.

Today, I blend the two issues – which is especially fitting, as there is significant overlap in the member groups supporting KIG and the Forest Stewardship bill – and a similar pattern of omissions and mistakes as well.

Most of the people loosely considered “environmentalists” – conservationists, preservationists, land trusts, watershed groups, urban environmental justice groups, coastal advocates, you name it – strongly agree that climate change is by far our most pressing and #1 “environmental” problem.

So with that in mind, take a peek at the table above, which is from DEP’s 2009 Report and recommendations on how to implement and meet the deep greenhouse gas emission reduction goals set by the 2007 Global Warming Response Act.

That Report quantifies and connects the dots between forests, open space/Green Acres land preservation, carbon storage and sequestration, and climate change (look at the table above – note how it also cited then pending legislation).

So, given the priority of climate change and the DEP’s technical analysis, ask yourself why the KIG website and the KIG Report supporting the initiative:  A Legacy of Green: Celebrating 50 Years of the Green Acres Program both fail to  even mention climate change?

Here is the KIG summary of environmental and health benefits derived from Green Acres, which totally ignore climate change and carbon sequestration:

Here is the KIG website, including a paper on benefits of land preservation, where you also can’t find anything about climate change either.

How could that be?

Answer: The Fat Man in the Front Office has made climate taboo – Gov. Christie has denied and dismantled NJ’s climate change programs and funding sources.

Both “Forest Stewardship” supporters and KIG open space advocates are afraid of alienating Christie and his right wing and corporate backers, all of whom want nothing to do with climate change.

And that, simply put, is bullshit.

ps – Based on a DC beltway insider’s book, Gov. Christie’ threat to drop the F bomb on national TV has gotten lots of media play, including a story about how he bragged that billionaires and the Koch Brothers begged him to run in 2012.

At the same time, Jane Meyer of the New Yorker has another great Koch story out, including a discussion of a new national Report about the influence of the Koch Brothers in targeting Congress and blocking climate change regulations by Congress and EPA.

I have suggested that the successful NJ Koch funded campaign by Americans for Prosperity to provide cover for Gov. Christie to kill RGGI is the model for the current ongoing national attack on climate, targeted on EPA regulations announced by President Obama.

Is it possible that national media could connect these dots, given how Christie, Koch’s, and climate are pressing national media issues?

That would be one hell of a story – perhaps only Matt Taibbi could do it justice. Paging Matt….