This Is Paulsboro, NJ – And Off Shore Wind Won’t Do Jack Shit For This “Sacrifice Zone”
Gov. Murphy’s Corporate Subsidy Wind Victory Press Conference Is An Insult
View From Paulsboro High School – fourth and long
[Update below]
Tomorrow, NJ Spotlight tells me, Gov. Murphy will hold a press conference in, of all places, Paulsboro NJ, to celebrate his multi-billion dollar subsidized corporate off shore wind victory.
For once, NJ Spotlight gets the context right [but they left a lot out]:
- [Gov.] Murphy is scheduled to sign the legislation tomorrow in Paulsboro, where the foundations for the turbines are to be manufactured. [They left out that most of the manufacturing, jobs, and profits are foreign.]
- The [federal] approval comes just days after the state Legislature approved a bill granting the developer access to lucrative federal tax credits to address concerns about rising costs and supply-chain issues. [They left out billions more in corporate subsides.]
They also left out another equally important recent story that provided the contrast to expose exactly what’s going on here: i.e. where Gov. Murphy’s Board Of Public Utilities just slashed a proposed public utility solar infrastructure and rooftop solar program by $286 million – a massive 75% cut in the proposed plan.
You see, there is not much corporate profit in rooftop solar and it is a real threat to the power and profits of the fossil fueled corporate utilities, their shareholders, and Wall Street parasites [aka “traders”] and investors.
That’s exactly the opposite of capital intensive wind, which works very well with the Wall Street financed and fossil gas corporate power business model, like PSE&G.
In addition to the issues of massive corporate subsidies to the Gov.’s off shore wind program and the revealing contrasting cuts to far more “sustainable” (I hate that word!) and the equitable (better concept, but still not equality) labor intensive, small scale, distributed, local, rooftop solar and the massive subsidies to PSE&G nuclear (over $1 billion so far and counting at $300 million per year as far as the eye can see), Gov. Murphy’s decision to sign this corporate scam in Paulsboro NJ is a huge slap in the face to the community, which has been neglected by DEP and poisoned by corporate polluters (as his DEP is doing very little to reduce these risks or pollution emissions).
I’ve written many, many times about Paulsboro, a toxic “sacrifice zone” (and years before Chris Hedges coined that phrase), e.g. see this recent post for the summary of that toxic history:
Off shore wind will do absolutely nothing to address any of these problems – and the fossil refinery will continue to operate and pollute.
Your author debates NJ Senator Sweeney, Earth Day, 2005. Sweeney would later become Senate President in 2010.
I’m too hot and burnt out right now to write anything more – the Pacific northwest is suffering a climate chaos induced simultaneous heat dome and smoke from Canadian wildfires.
And I can’t drink enough beer to make that go away.
The world is turning – I hope it don’t turn away. …
Get out of town, think I’ll get out of town.
I head for the sticks with my bus and friends.
I follow the road, but I don’t know where it ends.
[Update: 7/6/23 – Here is a perfect quote that reveals how totally out of touch the NJ groups are – I would bet that they have never even been in Paulsboro, but will appear today for the first time at Gov. Murphy’s press conference photo op (and probably get quotes in Murphy’s press release):
“Every responsible offshore-wind project moves us toward our clean-energy future, which in addition to climate and economic benefits, will also improve our air quality, which for too long has disproportionately impacted low-income communities and communities of color,’’ said Allison McLeod, senior policy director for the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters.”
