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New Jersey has only three coal plants left, but one-third to one-half of its air pollutants come from upwind neighbors with coal plants.
(Andre Chung/MCT)
Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the multinational auditor, recently released its annual survey of 1,322 CEOs from 77 countries. At the top of the list of fears for these flinty men of commerce, at 78 percent, was "over-regulation." Climate change did not even crack the top 20.
These are doubtlessly smart people. But this endemic ignorance - or is it institutional stupidity? - is a threat to the species, and the resistance to change by even the most accomplished men is why President Obama had to roll out his Clean Power Plan Monday.
It is the most significant climate initiative this country has ever undertaken, but for all our genius - our robust foundation, our filigree of entrepreneurship, our economic might - some still think choking on smokestack emissions is a cultural tradition they must never forsake. So right on cue, Gov. Christie said all the wrong things about the Clean Power initiative.
It has become a tedious litany: Reducing carbon will kill jobs, they say. It will hurt business. It will drive up energy prices. Enforcing regulations like this is unconstitutional.
For the purveyors of this trope, this morbid devotion to coal remains the head-scratcher of our age: It is already on its death bed domestically, mines are closing, companies are going bankrupt, natural gas has made it nearly obsolete, and the product itself is killing its employees.
They also tend to overlook how the warming trend caused by burning fossil fuels threatens our infrastructure, economy, health, and national security.
But you come to expect that from Christie, whose principles are so flexible he can bend them into a circle.
His administration sent a preemptive protest letter to the EPA in November, complaining how our state's "enormous progress in cutting CO2 emissions should be recognized." At a time when we need innovation - in wind, solar, and storage technology - this governor's message is that we've done enough, let's move on.
The president's goal is to cut emissions by 32 percent by 2030, using state-specific plans that would allow polluters to forge their own path - through conversion, renewables, efficiency, or via a cap-and-trade system. They just have to submit their plans by 2018 and go full bore by 2022. There is nothing radical about it.
This state once set goals for emission reductions, right around the time our governor ran his fervent pro-renewable campaign in 2009. Since then, Christie pulled out of RGGI, a decision that cost New Jersey thousands of jobs, $130 million in revenue, and delayed the transition to renewables; green-lighted off-shore wind, the did nothing to implement it, and raided more than a billion dollars from the Clean Energy Fund.
All that happened just so Christie could pledge his smutty allegiance to CEOs like the Koch Brothers, who lauded his rejection of RGGI as a "commitment to free enterprise."
No doubt, the Clean Power Plan will face legal challenges from coal companies, but everyone from the Pentagon to PSEG to the Pope wants this. A New York Times poll found that even 51 percent of Republicans want climate action. Eight in 10 New Jerseyans want carbon regulated - if only to stick a cork in the tailpipes of Pennsylvania and other upwind neighbors.
So the president is determined to tell the UN Climate Summit that the world's second largest carbon polluter is serious about reversing this planetary crisis. It's unfortunate that others prefer to punt and pander rather than lead, and are doomed to be remembered for their embrace of a historic blunder.
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