WolfeNotes.com

Murphy DEP Now Developing A Similarly Flawed Carbon Credit Scheme

According to a UN Report (which I can’t seem to find on line, but heard reported on BBC this morning), the UN’s carbon trading scheme failed to protect forests or reduce poverty: (credible source here):

Market-based approaches to forest conservation like carbon offsets and deforestation-free certification schemes have largely failed to protect trees or alleviate poverty, according to a major scientific review published on Monday.

The global study—the most comprehensive of its kind to date—found that trade and finance-driven initiatives had made “limited” progress halting deforestation and in some cases worsened economic inequality.

Drawn from years of academic and field work, the report compiled by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), a group of 15,000 scientists in 120 countries, will be presented at a high-level UN forum starting Monday

As a heads up, my NJ readers should know that last year, during Senator Smith’s Forestry Task Force deliberations, the Murphy DEP stated that they were developing a forest carbon credit scheme to manage NJ’s forests.

This type of market based program would likely be funded by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which provides 10% of DEP’s share of RGGI allowance sale revenue to carbon storage and sequestration.

A politically powerful and well connected to DEP NJ based billionaire, Peter Kellogg already has enrolled his Hudson Farm lands in a private carbon credit – trading program.

Kellogg provided over $300,000 to fund NJ Audubon’s “forest stewardship” logging project at Sparta Mountain – a joint project with DEP.

Kellogg also paid for $5,000 per week DEP managers junkets.

Kellogg is a former Wall Streeter like our NJ Governor Phil Murphy, so his money, his land, and his connections have had undue influence on DEP’s flawed forestry policy.

Given the DEP statement about developing a carbon credit program, Kellogg’s support for such a program, and the availability of significant RGGI funding, it is very possible if not likely that Senator Smith will amend his current proposed forestry legislation to authorize the Murphy DEP’s carbon credit schemes.

DEP could also attempt to adopt such a carbon credit program via regulations or informal guidance in the absence of authorizing legislation. DEP currently implements a “14 step process” to manage NJ’s forests on public lands in the absence of authorizing legislation and regulation, so anything is possible from the arrogant pro-logging bureaucrats at DEP.

I urge readers to contact Smith and DEP Commissioner LaTourette to tell them to avoid going down this failed market based path and instead pursue real planning and regulatory measure to preserve all of what’s left of NJ’s forests, on public and private land.

The UN is holding an annual conference on forests, starting today. You can watch live starting at 10 am, see:

• UN Forum on Forests – 19th session (6 to 10 May 2024)

Sunrise In The Catskills – Thomas Cole (1826)

Blue Ridge, Virginia – Bill Wolfe (2017)

Snake River, Idaho – Bill Wolfe (2022)

The Green Party Stifles Dissent and Criticism, Just Like Democrats Do

I registered for a Zoom webinar with Jill Stein and Prof. Jeff Sachs tonight.

After 25 minutes of a wonderful adult discussion, I posted a comment on the chat to praise that conversation and say that this is what democracy looks like.

I then submitted another positive chat comment to say “Imagine Jill as President with Sachs as Secretary of State”.

After Sachs signed off, the next conversation was with Stein’s campaign manager.

He launched into a technical ballot access and fundraising campaign monologue.

He then asked for donations of $3,300 (my monthly income).

In response, I submitted a comment to question that strategy and suggest that they ask for $10 donations and focus on Biden’s crackdown on campus protests.

Keep in mind that this was a private internal Green party event.

Within 10 seconds, I was removed. Terminated.

And I am registered as a Green and contributed money.

Fuck these people.

Which Side Are You On?

Yesterday, we returned to the University of Pennsylvania’s “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” protest against the Israeli genocide in Gaza to check out what’s happening, given the violent national police crackdowns on encampments across the country, some supported by attacks by brownshirt Zionist mobs.

That crackdown is very, very similar to the national crackdown on Occupy Wall Street encampments directed and coordinated by the Obama administration. This time, Biden is directing those attacks and has spoken out to criticize the encampments.

[Update: Just reading Jeff St. Clair at Counterpunch:

+ Here’s the political background to the police raids against antiwar students on campuses across the country this week, violent crackdowns that have Joe Biden’s fingerprints all over them: On Tuesday, Biden demonized the protesters as hate groups. On the same day 22 Democratic House members called for the students at Columbia to be cleared from the campus, this was followed by Chuck Schumer speaking on the floor of the Senate denouncing the occupation of Hind Hall as an act of terrorism. Then the NYPD did its vicious nightwork at Columbia and CCNY. On Wednesday morning, the Biden White House compared these brave students–from Columbia to UCLA, Indiana to Texas–to the white power tiki torch thugs at Charlottesville. On Thursday, Biden gave a speech that would have condemned the tactics of the Civil Rights Movement, women’s movement, Native American Rights movement, anti-Vietnam War movement, Stonewall, anti-apartheid movement, BLM and the labor movement he claims to venerate (not to mention the Boston Tea Party) as outside the American tradition of free speech. Biden is the author of the most repressive crime laws in the history of a nation whose statutes are full of repressive crime laws. He hasn’t changed. In fact, he’s gotten worse as his brain demyelinates and his grip on power becomes more and more tenuous. ~~~ end update]

Thankfully, the chants and drumming drown out the police helicopter circling overhead.

But on the ground, although the police presence had grown considerably – we counted 14 police vans on the adjacent streets, saw many more uniformed police officers manning newly installed barricades, and several plainclothes cops standing in the crowd – there was no tension or threat of police violence.

The day before, we were appalled by a video of a real “outside agitator” spraying unknown chemicals on the encampment grounds, tents and banners. The man was arrested. I was told by a student that the chemical was identified as a diluted sulphur solution (intended to make the place smell bad) and that he was fined just $60 dollars with no criminal charges pressed (haven’t confirmed that).

The good news is that the encampment has about doubled in size. There were about a hundred people chanting to constant drumming and at least 100 more circled around the core group in support. There were more banners, more tents, a library, food table, and a medical clinic:

On the negative side, in addition to the much larger police presence, the University had taken down the banners on the statue of Ben Franklin and erected barriers around it:

Here’s how Ben looked last week:

On the national scene, there are troubling signs coming from some University encampments, which just so happened (causally) in the immediate wake of the police crackdown (think of the effects on the anti-war movement of Kent State and Jackson State murders as a precursor).

The violent police state tactics (incredibly violent police attack at Columbia) were coupled with Zionist Brownshirt assaults (incredibly brutal violence at UCLA) and promises of permanent career suicide by Mossad (using digital facial recognition technology). For the latter Mossad threat, think of that famous scene from the movie “On The Waterfront” where mobster Johnny Friendly gets in Marlon Brando’s face with “you don’t work anywhere….”

You just dug your own grave.

You’re dead on this waterfront, and every waterfront from Boston to New Orleans.

You don’t drive a truck, or a cab – you don’t push a bag of dreck.

You don’t work noplace! You’re dead! ~~~ “On the Waterfront” – (watch the Crime Commission scene)

Shamefully, University Presidents across the country are caving in to political pressure and McCarthyite smears to prohibit encampments, suspend students, and invite police on campus to make arrests. It is a disgusting display of cowardice, careerism, and corruption.

There have been several terribly compromised deals to terminate encampments.

Brown University protesters cut a deal to dismantle in exchange for the promise of a vote to divest – a vote in October. Rutgers just cut a similar or even worse deal. Another University (Northwestern) cut a deal as well, this one for some (5?) academic slots for Palestinian students and curriculum “reform”.

So, just as rapidly as the Pro-Palestine campus movement arose, it may now be falling.

And Real News Network just cancelled Chris Hedges show, allegedly for tax purposes resulting from Hedges’ criticism of Biden and Democrats and interview of candidate Dennis Kucinich.

The House just passed legislation to make criticism of Israel a federal crime (antisemitism) and eliminate Constitutional rights of free speech and abandon any notion of academic freedom.

Truly dark times, with even worse on the horizon.

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:

• DEP chief reflects on NJ’s clean-energy transition

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:

• The Right Wing’s New Long Game Plan – “Project 2025″

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:

• Murphy DEP Commissioner LaTourette Is Misleading The Public About The Environmental Justice Law And PVSC Fossil Power Plant

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.