Murphy DEP Commissioner LaTourette Dismisses Climate Regulation As A “Magical Mandate”
In Response To A Direct Question, LaTourette Can’t Defend Murphy Record
Evasion, Obfuscation, Spin, Gaslighting & Flat Out Falsehoods
Earth Day Fairy Tales
The commodification of American culture, the commodification of human beings, whose worth is determined by the market, as well as the commodification of the natural world, whose worth is determined by the market, means that each will be exploited by corporate power until exhaustion or collapse. Which is why the economic crisis is intimately linked to the environmental crisis.
Societies that can not regulate capitalist forces – as Marx understood – cannibalize themselves until they die. ~~~ Chris Hedges (@ time 38 minutes)
NJ Spotlight interviewed Murphy DEP Commissioner Shawn LaTourette on Earth Day last week, and in an unusually long 10 minute interview, posed some surprisingly skeptical and pointed questions, see:
When NJ Spotlight is skeptical, then your bullshit spin and gaslighting are wearing extremely thin and credibility is in the toilet.
So, I want to drill down on a few critical issues that were obscured in Commissioner LaTourette’s continuing gaslighting.
First, after a brief introduction, at time 1:35, NJ Spotlight asks about DEP’s review and policy on pending gas plants:
Where do you see us in the next 10 years, because there are pending proposals for new natural gas plants to come on line. What’s your stance on that?
LaTourette totally evades the question and spouts slogans, prompting NJ Spotlight to interrupt his bullshit with another pointed question: (at 2:47)
What does that mean? What does that look like?
LaTourette again evades the question, and goes on to praise the “fossil fuel generating sector” for their efforts to transition to clean energy!
He then advocates “slowly transitioning off of fossil gas”.
Get that? He supports a “slow transition” in the face of a climate emergency and severe criticism for the slow pace of the Murphy Administration and DEP’s efforts to make that transition.
How out of touch is that?
He then deploys a disingenuous red herring about “flipping a switch” to stop the current use of natural gas – which no climate activist is advocating.
After twice evading the question about pending gas power plant projects, and then deploying a misleading red herring, LaTourette exposed his true views on the role of DEP and regulations with this extreme dismissal of DEP regulatory responsibilities:
There are no mandates that are magically going to get us to these points.
DEP regulations are now smeared – by the DEP Commissioner himself – as “magical mandates”.
That’s not the first time that LaTourette has attacked and undermined the regulatory functions and responsibilities of his own agency. With his professional background in corporate law, those ideological anti-regulatory views are the coin of the realm.
For decades, corporations and the Republican right have attacked environmental regulations with slogans, from “Soviet Style Command and Control Regulation” to “job killing bureaucratic red tape”.
This corporate anti-regulatory PR campaign goes back to the infamous Powell Memo – “Attack On American Free Enterprise System”(1971).
This strategy memo is highly revealing, and, given its focus and attack on the University, should be read in its entirety, particularly given the revival of the college campus. I’ll limit my take here to excerpts that attack regulation and regulators: (emphases mine)
No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack.* …
There always have been some who opposed the American system, and preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism)
… those who eschew the mainstream of the system, often remain in key positions of influence where they mold public opinion and often shape goveramental (sic) action. In many instances, these “intellectuals” end up in regulatory agencies or governmental departments with large authority over the business system they do not believe in. […]
There seems to be little awareness that the only alternatives to free enterprise are varying degrees-of bureaucratic regulation of individual freedom – ranging from that under moderate socialism to the iron heel of the leftist or rightist dictatorship.
We in America already have moved very far indeed toward some aspects of state socialism as the needs and complexities of a vast urban society require types of regulation and control that were quite unnecessary in earlier times. In some areas such regulation and control already have seriously impaired the freedom of both business and labor and indeed of the public generally.
That corporate ideological campaign has evolved and is now manifest as an even more radical extreme project to “dismantle the administrative state” entirely, see:
Getting back to the LaTourette interview, when pressed by questions on the proposed Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission’s (PVSC) gas power plant in Newark, he again gaslighted and flat out lied.
He evaded the question about DEP review. He misleading called the project a local project and downplayed DEP’s regulatory role. He lied about the application of the environmental justice law, see:
Finally, in his most blatant and significant lie, LaTourette claimed that he had imposed a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector: (time 6:45):
We have placed a cap on carbon emissions from electric generating units, statewide.
That is flat out false.
I assume that LaTourette was referring to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). (The DEP’s power sector CO2 rule sets lax emissions rates, not caps on emissions).
If so, he lied because the RGGI program is a cap and trade program, not a hard cap on emissions. LaTourette is a lawyer and he knows that.
Furthermore, the RGGI program does not apply to or include all electric generating units, but only a subset of power plants that generate power supplied to the grid.
It does not apply to methane emissions or fossil energy imports.
The RGGI program represents less than 20% of NJ’s total greenhouse gas emissions and has had little or no impact on CO2 emissions from NJ’s power sector.
Finally, the Murphy DEP did not design the RGGI program or establish the quantity of or allocation of CO2 emission allowances that constitute what Latourette falsely calls the emissions “cap”, so DEP did virtually nothing more than rejoin the RGGI program that Gov. Christie exited from.
The RGGI program was designed 15 years ago. LaTourette and his DEP played no role in any of that.
It’s a sickeningly sad day when a DEP Commissioner can attack DEP regulation, gaslight, and lie on Earth Day – and get absolutely no criticism for that by the environmental community who continue to cheerlead.