People’s Climate Collapse? What Is Wrong With The NJ Environmental Community? A Wake Up Call

Weeks after The People’s Climate March, the most aggressive climate bill ever heard in NJ is ignored

Focus on fundraising, feel good gestures, & destructive diversions

A Tale of Milkweed, Mitigation, and Money

On September 21, 2014, I joined over 300,000 people in New York for the People’s Climate March.

Prior to the march, astute critics had raised strategic questions about how the march was organized. I must say that I sympathized with those arguments, but attended anyway.

Regardless, I’m sure tens of thousands of the marchers were from NJ.

NJ environmental groups did great organizing work to promote the march and turned out their memberships.

The march was well covered in virtually all NJ press.

But, when the march was over, what happened?

Was all that people power and enthusiasm and street heat organized and translated and channeled into meaningful action?

Was the press corps given impetus to write more aggressive climate stories?

Were the fossil corporations and their lobbyists running scared?

Were regulators and legislators emboldened and given cover to resist corporate lobbying?

Tragically, the first test of those questions reveals a big and across the board NO!

Let me explain.

On Thursday October 9, the Senate Environment Committee considered the most important climate change legislation since the 2007 Global Warming Response Act (GWRA).

But contrary to the GWRA, this bill had teeth (see S2444) and would establish the most aggressive and enforceable renewable energy requirements in the world. 

The bill would mandate that 80% of NJ’s electric energy be provided by renewable sources by 2050, along a pathway defined by mandatory annual milestones along the way to that 2050 goal.

Current voluntary off shore wind goal of 1,100 megawatts would be quadrupled to 4,500 and made mandatory. Solar capacity would be radically ramped up to almost 14% of total electric sold in the state by 2030.

By doing so, the bill would radically transform the electric power sector, provide huge real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and serve as a national model.

So, what happened? Listen to the hearing here yourself.

Environmentalists, for the most part, didn’t even show up. Sierra Club and NJ Environmental Federation were the only groups to testify on the bill – all the others were AWOL, even though I saw some environmental lobbyists in the legislative annex building.

Guess they were too busy with the new environmental activism, which means  (and this is a real list of well publicized events, rattled off the top of my head, in just the last month or so – you can’t make this stuff up):

planting milkweed; keeping NJ highway medians safe for pretty flowers; writing corporate Foundation grant applications; hosting fundraisers; burning and logging forests; planting bushes alongside electric powerlines and gas pipelines; meeting with Corporate Stewardship Councils; taking Walmart and energy company grants; buying expensive “eco-goats”; writing propaganda Op-Eds promoting theft of billions of dollars of environmental funds; selling sustainable rain barrels and compact fluorescent bulbs; holding road rally’s with highly polluting cars; conducting cultural carnivals; planting flowers at the local shopping center hardware stores; pubcrawls; expensive eco-tours; seafood  festivals; picking up litter; certifying voluntary local feel good measures; promoting state funded greenscam projects (e.g. beach replenishment for birds, dredge spoil disposal in wetlands, and stormwater detention basins in Barnegat Bay)  in exchange for State DEP and federal grants……….

I could go on, but I won’t – and all the organizations out there know exactly who you are, I don’t have to name names here.

[Update: 7/26/15 – here are a few more examples to add to the list above:

• Elusive Monarch draws a crowd for Butterfly Day
• Cataloging animals, plants along NJ waterways in preparation for oil spill

There are many different types of diversionary tacts, e.g. I forgot to include stuff like corporate sponsored research that also diverts from real issues, like Dupont’s funding of NJ Audubon in Delaware Bay with the Orwellian title – Clear Into The Future.  or PSEG ROW habitat restoration.~~~ end update]

The environmentalists that did show up gave tepid support or weak testimony that had no effect on legislators and was dismissed by press. They almost seemed afraid to mention the phrase “climate change”.

BPU Ratepayer Advocate (AKA “Dr. No”) continued the drumbeat on their singular and narrow focus – which lacks economic credibility- on the alleged high costs and ratepayer burdens, while ignoring the climate crisis, the social costs of carbon, along with the benefits and avoided costs of renewables.

The media didn’t even show up – the only story was a pile of one sided energy industry dominated propaganda.

The industry lobbyists did not flinch from making the most reactionary, false, and misleading fossil fuel arguments, including lies about renewable power and the situation in Germany.

[Update: In another bill heard (see S2420 [1R]), solar advocates had to beg to request an increase of the current 2.5% cap on net metering to just 4% of commercial electric sales. Most NJ solar is from net metered projects. That groveling by the solar industry itself showed the absolute veto power the utilities have over real expansion of renewables. Current law allows the utilities to petition BPU to prohibit ANY ADDITIONAL RENEWABLES generating power to the grid that exceed the cap. Imagine that. Utilities have almost veto power over market entry to eliminate competition from even CHEAPER renewables. That is absurd. Yet NO ONE even questioned why utilities and BPU should have this power or why there should even be any cap. So called Ratepayer advocate had nothing to say about this anti-competitive costly monopoly abuse.

In another amazingly revealing example, Chairman Smith pointed to the millions of square feet of warehouse rooftops that could be solar powered. As each industry witnesses testified, Smith demanded to know WHY there was no solar on those warehouse rooftops. Finally, Fred DeSanti, a solar lobbyists, had the balls to tell him because the 2012 Solar Act that Smith himself sponsored puts strict caps on the amount of installed solar. The NJ legislators – preferring “stability” in the solar market which relies os SREC’s  over rapid and significant expansion of solar capacity –  imposed strict caps on the amount of solar that can be installed! Holy moly! Legislation is blocking the expansion of solar! And is was Smith’s own bill that was blocking warehouse rooftop solar! – end update]

The legislators were cowed (e.g. before there day was even over, the bill’s co-sponsor Senator Smith was running away from there in-state local content requirements, a key to a NJ job creation strategy.)

And there was not one – not one – mention of the People’s Climate March as changing anything.

So tell me, please, what the fuck is wrong with the NJ Envrionmental Community?

If the renewable energy bill is ever reposted for another hearing, there needs to be a rally with 5,000 people on the State House steps before the hearing.

[PS – I must admit that I stole the main portion of my headline from this superb NJ Spotlight article: What’s Wrong with Chris Christie’s Government?]