Bill Would Do Nothing To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Supporters Are Misleading The Public
I was busy Monday, so didn’t listen to the Assembly committee hearing on the proposed Climate Superfund Act. The bill was released by the Committee.
The Senate version is buried in the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, the place where all good environmental bills go to die under Senator Sarlo’s dirty thumb. As I wrote on Sarlo and climate: (4/28/11)
Last week, Sarlo publicly stood with the Koch Brother’s billionaire funded TeaBaggers (Americans for Prosperity)and assorted global warming deniers in attacking the ten northeastern states’ Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).
Today the Bergen Record reported the story: Many turn out at rally to end NJ’s participation in regional cap and trade agreement
Sarlo sought to kill RGGI (~~~$75 million/year) – which is chump change compared to this bill (NY law is $3 BILLION/year)!
The bill’s supporters are like crickets on Sarlo. Will they take him on publicly? Or continue the Kabuki?
I note that the Assembly bill was similarly Referred to Assembly Commerce, Economic Development and Agriculture Committee. I don’t know the Assembly Chair – likely a Sarlo wanna be – but the bill likely will suffer a similar fate.
I wrote about my problems with that bill last Sunday, see:
In just now Googling for press coverage, I found just one “article” – actually, it is a press release by the bill’s supporters – at Insider NJ:
I was pleased to see that activists were rallying in Trenton.
But, once again, I need to go on the record to call out the bill’s supporters, not only for strategic errors but for misleading the public. And they are intentionally using nuanced language to create this deception, by conflating emissions reduction (mitigation) and climate impacts (cause) with adaptation (effect).
This conflation is not some minor error in logic or sloppy use of language. It is essential and suggests manipulation and abdication of efforts to reduce GHG emissions.
And the analogy to the federal Superfund law is not apt and misleading as well.
Congress passed the Superfund law in 1980.That law funded the cleanup of toxic waste sites.
But 4 years prior to passage of Superfund, Congress passed the Resource Conservation And Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1976. RCRA regulates and prohibits the discharge of hazardous substances and toxic wastes.
Superfund was part of a previously enacted broader program that prohibited and regulated toxic waste and hazardous substances, designed to prevent the creation of more Superfund sites and more Superfund cleanup expenses.
The Climate Superfund bill is NOT part of a previously enacted program that prohibits and regulates greenhouse gas emissions to prevent additional climate damages and the need for more money to adapt to impacts from the climate emergency. The NJ Global Warming Response Act is toothless and DEP does NOT regulate GHG emissions to meet the goals of the Act.
The DEP CO2 regulations are adopted under the NJ Air Pollution Control Act, are NOT tied to GHG emission reduction goals, do NOT apply to fossil infrastructure (e.g. pipelines), do NOT apply to buildings or transportation, and apply to only a tiny tiny fraction of total GHG emissions, from power plants that produce electricity for the grid.
So, the Superfund analogy also is misleading.
I’ll highlight just 2 quotes as examples of that deception:
This bill ensures those that have benefited the most and reaped billions from emitting the pollutants causing the damage pay more of their fair share of the costs and needed mitigation,” said Senate co-sponsor and Legislative Oversight Chair Andrew Zwicker, Ph.D. (D-South Brunswick).
Senator Zwicker is being disingenuous by his use of the term “mitigation”.
He has a PhD and has been involved in climate science and policy for a long time, so I can only assume that it is intentional deception.
The bill (Climate Superfund Act,) DOES NOT USE THE WORD “MITIGATION” and is limited to “ADAPTATION”.
In contrast, a similar federal bill includes adaptation and other related programs that COULD reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The recently reintroduced proposed federal Polluter Pays Climate Fund – which has ZERO chance of passage in the current Republican Congress and Trump fascist regime – is similarly focused on adaptation, but it has broader uses of the funds, which include projects that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including energy efficiency, distributed energy, transportation, agriculture, ecosystems, and public health. Why isn’t the NJ bill at LEAST as broad as the federal bill?
Accordingly, the NJ bill does NOTHING to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In climate policy, the word “mitigation” refers to emissions reductions. The word “adaptation” refers to efforts to address the damages from climate. Sen. Zwicker and climate activist are misleading the public.
We are in a climate emergency and are losing the battle to reduce GHG emissions. Yes, polluters must pay, but they also must reduce and phase out GHG emissions.
Sen. Zwicker can start by backing legislation to ban new fossil infrastructure and mandate GHG emissions reduction (i.e put teeth in NJ Global Warming Response Act). This bill misses the mark.
Sen. Zwicker also could use his Committee to hold oversight hearings on DEP’s progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and lack of effective regulation and enforcement.
Here’s another example – the reader can only interpret this to mean that passage of this bill would alleviate air pollution in Newark. This is a false impression:
Isn’t it about time the largest corporate polluters pay for some of the damage to our lungs and property instead of sticking it to taxpayers, ratepayers and consumers?” said Kim Gaddy, Executive Director of South Ward Environmental Alliance. “The Legislature needs to pass the Climate Superfund Act before more extreme weather and bad air arrives this summer.”
Newark will continue to suffer from air pollution and extreme weather.
Perhaps Ms. Gaddy should focus on weak DEP regulations, lax DEP enforcement, and new legislation with teeth that would actually reduce existing pollution (instead of grandfathering it all, like the fatally flawed NJ ENvironmental Justice law and DEP regulations she also supported do).