WolfeNotes.com

[Update below]

Here is an excellent essay that lays out our predicament:

Our Society Is Living a Massive Lie About the Threat of Climate Change — It’s Time to Wake Up

It applies Vaclav Havel’s “living in truth” framework to the climate crisis.

I strongly recommend that you read the whole thing, but I want to provide one excerpt, only because it makes the point I was trying to make in yesterday’s post:

(of course, tokenism, a form of denial, becomes affirmative evil when it is pursued for self interest, i.e. shilling for state and corporate funding )

Tokenism

Environmental tokenism plays a major role in maintaining the Climate Lie. Tokenism asks that you reduce your carbon footprint, recycle, bike, and turn off the lights when you leave a room. This is the dominant discourse on climate change. When people think: “God, climate change is terrifying! What should I do to stop it?” the answer they usually find or is supplied for them is to reduce their individual emissions.

This approach is a-political, even anti-political. The “solution” takes place individually, in private. It is not organized and shared. It does not challenge existing power structures.

Further, it belies a fundamental misunderstanding of human civilization. We are not merely a collection of individuals. No man is an island; we live in a web of complex systems, which are bigger than us. No one of us created this mess, and no one of us can end it. Individual consumption decisions can never create a carbon tax, they can’t build public transit systems, and they can’t make a city more resilient to hurricanes. Voluntary individual actions can’t do much, really, they are a drop in the bucket.

And that is why individual attempts to reduce consumption are tokenism. They substitute insignificant action for significant action. They give the feeling of making a difference without really making one. They serve as an act of symbolic cleansing. Letting us say, “I have done my part. My hands are clean.” These actions serve a magical function, psychologically, like a lucky rabbits foot. If we perform this ritual (recycling, turning down the AC, etc), if we make these sacrifices, maybe we will  somehow avert ecological catastrophe. But Environmental tokenism will not save us. It is the wrong scale. Environmental tokenism tells us that what is happening to the climate is a private matter rather than a political, social one.

[End note: this excerpt from a Tim DeChristopher interview illustrates one part of the Climate lie, and suggests why those in science and government have a moral duty to disclose and speak the truth as they know it:

Some factors that suggest “tokenism” are:

1) the misfit between the scale of the problem and the scale of the solution and the marginal impact on the problem (including an inability to be scaled);

2) the voluntary nature as opposed to mandatory nature of the action and it inability to change behavior, investment, or regulation or impact on the ground conditions;

3) the reliance on corporate power and the maintenance of corporate power and market values;

4) the deference to and reliance on market relations, where an individual or collective is subordinate role as consumers, not citizens;

5) the lack of funding and implementation mechanisms;

6) the extent to which the action diverts from existing  legal and public policy frameworks and obligations, e.g. substitution of a mandatory state regulatory program with a voluntary local market based one.

 Sustainable NJ Receives Almost $2 Million From BPU, Wal-Mart, and South Jersey Gas

A shill is a person who publicly helps a person or organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with the person or organization.

“Shill” typically refers to someone who purposely gives onlookers the impression that they are an enthusiastic independent customer of a seller (or marketer of ideas) for whom they are secretly working. The person or group who hires the shill is using crowd psychology to encourage other onlookers or audience members to purchase the goods or services (or accept the ideas being marketed). Shills are often employed by professional marketing campaigns. 

[Update below]

Bear with me here as I connect a few what may appear to be unrelated dots. (you may want to read this superb Naomi Klein interview for context. Tim DeChristopher made similar points in his recent Bill Moyers interview [and also this interview]. The best point is the last, so read on!

Wal-Mart is perhaps the epitome of an unsustainable global corporate enterprise that destroys local downtown merchants and economies, exploits labor, and destroys the environment. (See: Greenwashing the WalMart Way:

What does this actually mean? First, it’s a part of ongoing efforts by corporate actors like Wal-Mart to brand “sustainability” as a corporate-friendly term synonymous with productivity, efficiency and maximization. Sustainable means, in other words, whatever Wal-Mart says it means.

So why is a group called “Sustainable NJ”  laundering $380,000 of Wal-Mart money, providing the corporation huge green cover and dirt cheap advertising and promotion?

Strike One.

The South Jersey Gas Co. recently has come under huge public criticism for their extremely controversial proposal to build a $100 million 22 mile long gas pipeline through the Pinelands National Reserve – in undisputed clear violation of the Comprehensive Management Plan – to deliver fracked gas to repower a decrepit 50 year old power plant (at a cost of another $400 million), whose cooling water intakes will continue to slaughter billions of aquatic organisms in Great Egg Bay while its power plant stacks pump tons of carbon and other pollutants into the air.

South Jersey Gas is the epitome of an unsustainable corporation. And the public outrage over their pipeline/repower project has put them in a very bad light – they are desperate for a little cover.

So, right on time, coming to their rescue, a group named “Sustainable NJ” deploys their “green teams” to promote South Jersey Gas’ “leadership” in an October 28 “Leadership Forum” at Stockton State College. Right on time for the Pinelands Commission approval!

Strike two.

Yesterday I wrote about another example of how “Sustainable NJ (TM)” (SNJ) is an ineffective fraud. Previously on this topic, I wrote:

• Christie Administration Outsources Climate Change Adaptation Planning
• Sustainable Slogans – Untenable Policy

I got mail from readers – although one objected, I got others saying I missed the story and didn’t nearly go far enough in exposing the scam that SNJ perpetrates on the people of NJ! (Wow, that’s something I usually accuse corporate media of!)

So today, we provide additional information to document the massive scale of their shilling in the hopes that we can either shame the organization into mending its ways (extremely unlikely); shame the funders into mending theirs (even more unlikely) or force external inquiries that can creature sufficient public pressure to reform the abuses we’ve become aware of.

My criticisms of SNJ thus far  have focused on flaws in the vague concept of sustainability, and how these flaws are exploited by SNJ in a way that misleads and manipulates well meaning and concerned people by channeling them in ineffective directions, all while providing cover for politicians and government policy failures.

Specifically, SNJ provides cover for the fact that the Christie Administration is doing virtually nothing on climate change or adaptation planning and regulation, which are critical State government responsibilities pursuant to the 2007 Global Warming Response Act , the NJ State Air Pollution Control Act (in NJ, greenhouse gases have been regulated as “pollutants” since 2005); the federal Coastal Zone Management Act; the NJ State Coastal Area Facilities Review Act (CAFRA), and the NJ State Flood Hazard Control Act, among other federal and state environmental laws.

But instead of implementing and enforcing these laws, the Christie Administration has either ignored, deregulated, or outsourced those State level planning and regulatory responsibilities, including to private groups like Sustainable NJ.

Sustainable NJ then effectively guts these state programs by making them voluntary local initiatives or market based initiatives.

So, when I wrote that SNJ and BPU were “literally the same” – I meant it – SNJ is BPU’s well funded agent.

Which takes us to our third and final point:

Sustainable NJ not only provides cover for the Christie Administration – they withhold criticism, including: 1) the abdication of State responsibility under various environmental laws; 2) Governor Christie’s neglect, gutting and rollback of climate change programs; and 3) Governor Christie’s theft of $1 BILLION in Clean Energy Funds designed to promote many of the objectives SNJ says they support.

And now, here’s strike three: they do all that while accepting $1,439,850 from the [Christie diverted] Clean Energy Fund! Yup, SNJ BENEFITS from what HARMS almost everyone else!

So of course they are not going to criticize the Gov. theft – they benefit from it!

According to BPU, Sustainable NJ accounts for 78% of NJ’s Energy Efficiency Program  (Source: see table in Appendix A of the BPU EE Compliance filing).

To give you a sense of the scope and magnitude of the harm caused by SNJ shilling, we need to consider how energy efficiency and sustainable energy expertise could be applied under NJ’s laws and programs.

For an example of that, here’s what an independent energy expert – who represents the same local governments that SNJ says it does – recently testified on the NJ energy planning program; the BPU regulatory policy regarding energy efficiency and the performance of NJ’s energy efficient programs (an analysis and findings you will never hear from SNJ) :

• However, these reports are outdated. PJM’s 2007 Load Forecasting Report uses 2006 data for projecting consumer demand in 2011 and beyond. Not only does this data fail to consider reduced consumption due to the current  recession, it does not consider substantial efforts by the BPU and others since 2006 to reduce consumer demand through increased efficiency, improved time-of-use metering and expanded demand response. PJM also does not factor in the probability of mandated efficiency standards and conservation efforts.

• I will demonstrate that, even if there is a proposed need for electricity, energy efficiency and demand side management, along with the deployment of distributed generation, offer much better alternatives than the Susquehanna-Roseland project. 

• PJM assumed that only the amount of load management available in 2007 would be available in future years.16 This assumption was made despite public policy mandates of load management, conservation and efficiency.

• Many studies have found that demand side management is the cheapest way to respond to increases in demand for electricity when compared with building new sources of electricity supply or associated infrastructure such as transmission lines to access generation. Increasing energy efficiency, one study concluded, “is generally the largest, least expensive, most benign, most quickly deployable, least visible, least understood, and most neglected way to provide energy services.”26 Or, as Jon Wellinghoff, the Commissioner of the FERC, put it, “the potential benefits from the incorporation of demand response into wholesale markets indicate that a  considerable margin of gain is possible from accelerating such activity.”27 

• Currently, PSEG admits that the cost of transmitting and distributing electricity in New Jersey is about one-third the average residential customer’s electricity bill of 16 cents/kWh28, meaning that transmission and distribution costs roughly 5.3 cents/kWh and generation 10. 4  cents/kWh. Demand side management programs, by contrast, displace the need for generation and transmission infrastructure at a small fraction of this cost. The International Energy Agency  reviewed forty large-scale commercial DSM programs found that they saved electricity at an average cost of 2.1 to 3.0 ¢/kWh.29 Similarly, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers found an average cost of 2.6 ¢/kWh for demand-side management, load management, and energy efficiency programs in Vermont.30 Another 2009 study found that the total cost for DSM programs ranged from 2.6 to 4.0 cents per kWh.

• New Jersey has an immense amount of untapped energy efficiency potential. One study from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy noted that cost effective investments in energy efficiency in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania could reduce electricity use by 33 percent in aggregate.33 Another assessment from the Center for Energy, Economic and Environmental Policy at the Bloustein School of Public Policy and Planning at Rutgers University evaluated New Jersey’s Reduced Energy Demand Options Program and found that virtually no customers had yet taken advantage of it, implying that significant savings could still be reached through promotion and participation.34 The Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnership went even further and noted in 2009 that New Jersey could cost effectively save  19,000 GWh per year, including 5,700 MW of peak demand, through energy efficiency and  demand side management programs.35 The study calculated that such programs could collectively realize $16.8 billion in net savings by 2020. PSEG has captured only a small fraction of this potential. According to Response to Municipal Interveners Request Munis-General-7/8, PSEG spent a total of $134 million on energy efficiency and demand side management in 2007 to save 733,352 MWh, and $142 million in 2008 to save 672,016 MWh. PSEG operates a power portfolio of 13,576 MW, capable of providing 107,033,184 MWh of electricity per year at a 90 percent capacity factor.36 This means PSEG’s energy efficiency offset only 0.6 percent of potential electricity generation in 2008. A recent 2009 assessment found that of the 75 largest utilities that offered energy efficiency programs in 2007, PSEG did not even make the list of the top 50.37 PSE&G should market, promote, solicit, recruit and institute basic energy efficiency programs. 

These are the kind of hard hitting facts and expert recommendations, made in a regulatory proceeding, that can change results and policies.

The BPU simply does not want to hear these kind of facts and criticism presented in a regulatory proceeding where they could be implemented and make a real change. Real change would be vehemently opposed by powerful corporate interests, including PSEG.

They want to keep the public, local officials, and environmental advocates in the dark about all this and protect PSEG from exactly these kinds of criticisms.

That’s why they pay off ineffective shills like SNJ.

Here’s BPU Office of Clean Energy Report (November 14, 2012):

Sustainable Jersey

The 2012-2013 budget for Sustainable Jersey will carry forward any unspent funds from the 2011 budget and also includes funding for new services to be provided in 2012 and the first six months of 2013. Services to be provided in 2013 are described in Attachment A.  […]

Those with the stomach for it can go hit the link and read Appendix A for a summary of SNJ “programs”.

I can assure you, you will read NOTHING like the above – I can also assure you that SNJ’s work is having virtually no impact on regulatory policy, investment in energy infrastructure, or the environmental performance of our energy systems.

Strike Three, you’re out.

You can’t even make this stuff up – not even in Chinatown.

[Update: 9/10/13 – additional points of clarification:

1. For the local issues, the same arguments can be made but were left out of this piece.

Local issues can be addressed within the framework of the MLUL Master Plan and local zoning ordinances, which provide enforceable requirements for land use, infrastructure, transportation, open space, recycling, water, energy, building codes, etc.

The SNJ certification and scorecard process diverts from those real requirements by setting up a parallel system that is all voluntary feel good measures that will not change actual on the ground conditions.

[just  take a look at DEP promo – it is almost a parody. Note that the local Sustainability Plan has no legal basis, no regulatory authority, no criteria or standards or methods of measurement and evaluation, no binding effect, no funding mechanisms, and no mechanisms to be implemented or formally linked to enforceable requirements. It is a parallel universe of feel good slogans and voluntary aspirations – put all the nice people in a room and keep them happy chatting about slogans while business as usual transpires.]

Here are a few reforms to that MLUL framework that sustainable local bottom up activists could pursue:

• require climate change vulnerability assessment, GWRA numeric emission reductions, and adaptation planning in Master Plan, zoning, and local codes; [this would take new legislation – no campaign I’m aware of and no bill introduced to do that]
• enable municipal power co-ops and distributed renewables elements of local Hazard Mitigation Plans [this too would take either major change in NJ State Hazard Mitigation Plan and.or new legislation. Nothing happening on those fronts that I’ve seen]
• make recommendations of the Environmental Commission binding on Master Plan and development reviews [would take new legislation, not even being pursued]

There are many more examples I could suggest showing how real, enforceable reforms can be implemented in the current framework – none of which are being pursued by SNJ. (where are the bills? Where are the Christie Admin rules? Where is the Christie budget? – everything is going in the opposite direction while SNJ remains mute]

2. Well meaning people are not only being diverted on the substance –

They are not focused on political organizing, movement building, and accountability efforts that could be effective.

SNJ sucks up resources, funding, and community initiative that could be organized to be effective grass roots advocacy.

The corporations and right wing politicians have funded SNJ for exactly this reason: they dissipate, divert, and neutralize effective political response to public policy problems.

In short, they frustrate democracy –

3. And if you think my headline was over the top and that this is not a life and death matter, please read this. end update.

ps- apologies to Roberta Flack for any unintended allusions – I love that song!

Sustainable NJ and BPU Are Literally The Same

I can’t seem to even take a local bike ride without running into trouble.

I set off this gorgeous morning for a ride, but stopped by Gilder Park to see if I could watch a few innings of a youth or AAU baseball game.

There was nothing happening at the baseball field, but I saw banners and people gathering at Carslake Community Center at what looked like a cool event, so I drove over to scope it out.

I saw two guys at a table with “Sustainable NJ” and a “BPU” banners. Uh Oh.

I asked who was with BPU – they both chimed in, “I am”.

I asked who was with Sustainable NJ – they both chimed in, “I am”.

When I asked them whether it was appropriate for “Sustainable NJ” (a private non-profit) and “BPU” (an independent government regulatory agency) to be presented to the public as the same entity, neither had a clue about what I was concerned about.

Upon further inquiry, in turns out that both of them were private sector contractors under contract with the BPU.

Never mind about providing cover, Sustainable NJ has literally merged with BPU- they were presented as one and the same.

The “Sustainable Men” were at Carslake demonstrating, selling, and/or giving away compact florescent light bulbs at the “Energy Saving Lighting Fair” sponsored by the Bordentown Environmental Commission – after hearing this, I didn’t inquire about the details.

Instead, I asked them if their efforts might be better directed to educating people – not about compact fluorescent light bulbs – but about the  fact that Governor Christie diverted $1 billion in Clean Energy Funds.

I asked them:

• From an energy ROI and an economic ROI perspective, wouldn’t the $1 billion the Governor stole be put to better use than buying light bulbs? (How many homes could be energy efficient solar with $1 billion?)

• If so, wouldn’t their efforts be more effective in organizing protests on the State House steps to criticize the Governor and demand that the legislature restore the $1 billion the Governor stole?

Crickets – neither of them even tried to reply to either of those questions.

Which is why, as I’ve written, that Sustainable NJ is a fraud –  they provide cover for the Governor’s agenda and mislead and divert well meaning citizens away from far more effective responses.

We must act as citizens and organize politically for collective government responses, not act as individual consumers in the marketplace.

Gov. Has Used Environmental Accounts As An ATM Card – Over $1 Billion Gone

Christie Eats $42 Million Motherhood & Apple Pie – Leaves $2 Million In Crumbs

DEP Press Office Again Caught In Flat Out Lie

[Update below]

NJ once lead the nation in being the first state to establish a Statewide Recycling Program (1982), the first to mandate and fund local curbside collection via trash disposal taxes (1985/1987), and the first to set the most aggressive recycling rates for both municipal and commercial/industrial wastes (1992).

Public support for recycling and participation in local programs has grown tremendously over this period, to the point where recycling has become institutionalized and embraced as a motherhood and apple pie issue.

Not surprisingly, a well funded and publicly supported program led to some of the highest recycling rates in the country.

But all this progress is threatened by Gov. Christie, who has stolen $42 million in local recycling funds to pay for his tax cuts and business subsidies.

The recycling fund heist is just another example of how Christie is following the conservative Republican playbook: dismantle, deregulate, defund, mismanage, discredit, and privatize effective and popular government and environmental programs.

As WNYC reported:(listen here)

“Towns that recycled more, got more money from the recycling fund,” said Bill Wolfe, a former Department of Environmental Protection employee-turned-environmentalist.

NJ’s recycling tax has been the source of funding that drove this success.

But, when Larry Ragonese of the DEP press office was asked by a WNYC reporter to comment and explain why the Gov. was choking an effective and motherhood and apple pie program like recycling, DEP flat out lied (again!).

But since 2012 under Gov. Chris Christie, more than $41 million has been transferred from the recycling tax fund and placed into general revenue to help balance the state budget.

Larry Ragonese, spokesman for DEP, said that there has been no impact to the fund and no town has been slighted.

Thankfully, the WNYC reporter, armed with the facts, called Ragonese out – something that is far too rarely done by NJ press corps –  and he corrected his lie and walked back his spin:

[WNYC] – When we went back to the DEP, the agency spokesman corrected himself.

According to DEP data (table below) steady progress in recycling rates hit a plateau in 1997 at 43% of the municipal waste stream and 61% of total waste (commercial & industrial included) and then began a steady decline.

Progress resumed but was not yet fully restored to 1997 rates in 2010.

The initial rates of progress, the declining rates, and the resumption of progress are all linked to the availability of State funding to support the local recycling programs.

The initial recycling tax was established in 1982, but revenues effectively increased in 1985 with the “McEnroe” legislation that created significant new disposal taxes, portions of which were used to fund local and county recycling programs.

But those “McEnroe” trash disposal taxes expired in 1996 and were not renewed under the Whitman Administration’s anti-tax, anti-government, and anti-environmental policy agenda.

As a result, the DEP’s own data show that progress stalled and recycling rates actually declined, as funding to local programs dried up.

The Corzine Administration supported reauthorization of the recycling tax in 2006 [correction, 2008], and, not surprisingly, shortly thereafter the funded local programs began to improve performance and a 10 year decline was reveresed.

But, just as progress began to resume, Gov. Christie began to divert virtually every State environmental budget account that had cash on hand.

Now in the 4th year of his Administration, the Gov. has used environmental accounts as an ATM card.

Christie diverted or eliminated over $1 billion of funds dedicated to environmental purposes: over $800 million of Clean Energy Funds; about $200 million in RGGI carbon pollution emissions allowance revenues were diverted then the program terminated; $40 million of the Passaic River cleanup settlement; and $42 million from the Recycling Fund. Additional millions were raided from other accounts, like landfill closure.

Oh, but while the Gov. was eating motherhood and apple pie, he did leave some crumbs. According to OLS:

The [FY’14] budget recommends the transfer of $21.6 million from the State Recycling Fund to the General Fund for revenue. The estimated balance remaining in the fund after this transfer is $2.3 million.

[Update: 9/7/13 – First of all, I made a typo and an error, the diversion WNYC reported was $41 million and the Corzine Recycling tax was renewed in 2008, not 2006.

But the actual total diversion could be $48 million, because the Gov.’s first budget (FY’11) proposed to divert $7 million (see OLS analysis. page 16). I am not sure how the final adopted budget resolved this proposed diversion.

I wrote about that back on April 22, 2010 to call out the Administration’s Earth Week hypocrisy – stealing $7 million yet doing recycling Fund related photo ops. – end update]

 

Yesterday, I trucked up to the Delaware Watergap to witness the start of the destruction for the Susquehanna Roseland power line – from the “groundbreaking” scene to the views from the AT.

I almost hoped to arrive upon a huge protest scene, with hundreds of people laying in the road to block the trucks, monkeywrenchers in the woods, and EarthFirst! tree sitters with banners – or US Fish & Wildlife and National Park Service Enforcement delivering an emergency judicially imposed stop work order.

I have a vivid imagination.

Actually, I wouldn’t have been surprised by a NJ Audubon press release, celebrating the “mitigation” deal they struck –

(or a statement from the Obama WH, touting the groundbreaking as part of their “all of the above” energy policy and NEPA “modernization” & “streamlining” for “energy infrastructure” that drove this dirty deal) –

Such is the corrupt and perverse tenor of our times.

At any rate, here’s what I saw (as necessary, see captions for where shots were taken):