Can a Public Meeting Catalyze a Tipping Point for Both Accelerated Conventional and Creative Efforts to Address Climate Change?

(This was originally submitted as a comment directly on an article in New Jersey Spotlight. Their automated comment processing system is on the fritz, and threw it out after posting it for a few minutes, calling it “Spam.” With a quick fix unlikely, I, therefore, added to it and posted it as an article here.)

Tom Johnson’s article, “DEP’s First Step Toward Reducing Greenhouse Gases Dismissed as Too Tame by Critics,” on a NJDEP forum on climate change held Tuesday of this week was an incomplete view of what occurred.

While, yes, certainly “critics” thought it was “too tame” to achieve the State’s ambitious carbon reduction goals, and it was, that pretty much was going to be the case. We, and by that I mean all of us, should have started on this decades ago. NJDEP is just one agency; with limited resources; (usually) extremely limited vision, as is true of most organizations; and Air Quality, the host of the meeting, is just one division.

And yet despite this, another perspective is that at the very start of the meeting it was clarified that the usual frame that implicitly determines–and limits–what could and could not be discussed, was challenged and broken. We wound up departing from the nominal boundary: the department’s thinking to potentially just further regulate permittees, such as utility electric generating stations. Instead, it became the most open, creative, out-of-the-box forum for ideas I’ve ever heard from decades of going to these NJDEP things.

As NJDEP Director Frank Steitz stated, “Business as usual won’t get us there.” I’m not sure I’d ever heard “the long term” mentioned before at a NJDEP meeting. So he listened to non-business-as-usual ideas from attendees, non-passively, asking questions as necessary for clarification. The facilitators shushed no one. I, for one, had the opportunity to say several things not usually heard at a state government forum, such as taking advantage of, and building on, the businesses coming around on addressing climate change; linking our state’s recent interest on the latter to the still unrealized need to do the same for biodiversity; and moving much harder on efficiency at the demand level, including bringing in underutilized ideas from psychology to it.

And what was so personally rewarding, I heard urgency and creative ideas from so many around the room, such as market restructuring, putting a price on carbon, looking at advancements in other states to see what we might do, and sequestration. The “practical” interspersed with the innovative. As one environmentalist said to me afterwards, the businesspersons present seem to realize we’re in a different era now and they need to be a part of it.

Seems like an opportunity to me, for business and otherwise. While there were no illusions Air Quality or NJDEP could do all the things suggested, maybe it’s less crazy than it had been to figure out how they could be a critical part of the much larger efforts it’s going to take.

Of course, it was just one day. What happens next is unclear and rests, in part, on many others stepping up. The regulatory issues raised are important. But actually addressing the climate change issue will take many other strategies as well. Actively listening, much better than usual “Stakeholder Participation,” an audience thinking out-of-the-box, are not bad places to start and to continue to practice.

To that end, there are over a dozen articles and reports on ideas for New Jersey on this, as well as the interrelated topic of a green economy, here at GreenEconomyNJ.org that don’t usually come up (although a few did this time, which is why this article was not made “Part 7” of the earlier “What Are We Still Missing” series). For anyone who wants to go even deeper on the green economy in New Jersey, an Appendix in this one summarizes several other reports, etc., done over the decades, but which we weren’t ready for at the time.

For those interested in getting involved in climate change in New Jersey, as we really are going to have to do—and think—differently in what a European field I follow calls a Transformation, this seems like a really good time for your unique contributions. You might just have a piece that others could then build on.

Consider taking NJDEP up on its offer to send your ideas to NJDEP-baqp.dep.nj.gov (using the subject line: “Reducing Carbon Emissions in New Jersey”). Perhaps offer something about implementation as that will be challenging. Hopefully, they’ll consider them, and save the “really too far out there” stuff for a time when we need even those.

Returning to the mundane, I hope when that comments processor gets fixed it at least comes to see the earlier version of this is as “Elite-level” Spam.

“Carbon Neutral” is Not Good Enough in Energy Master Plan

Jeff Tittel, Senior Chapter Director, NJ Sierra Club

(Reprinted from App.com with the author’s permission.)

The climate crisis is here and already impacting New Jersey. Greenhouse gas emissions globally set an all-time high last year. Our oceans are warming 40 percent faster than previously believed. The IPCC has given us 12 years before the worst climate impacts will become irreversible.

Gov. Phil Murphy’s state Board of Public Utilities recently released its Draft Energy Master Plan dealing with many issues affecting climate change and green energy. There is a growing sense of urgency to do more in combating climate impacts, but the EMP does not address natural gas.

There are things to like in the draft EMP, especially in electrifying the transportation sector and dealing with home heating. There is also a lot that’s missing, including any mention of a moratorium on fossil fuel projects.

What’s really troubling is the plan redefines clean energy as carbon neutral. This is a cynical move with major consequences. Clean energy is usually defined as wind, solar, energy efficiency, hydro and geo-thermal. Carbon neutral, by contrast, means that carbon will still be released. The definition includes natural gas, fossil fuel plants with carbon sequestration, nuclear power plants, incinerators, biomass, carbon credits and offsets. Redefining clean energy as carbon neutral will include a lot of dirty fuels. This is an Orwellian approach that sells out renewable energy by promoting natural gas and nuclear power.

Continue reading ““Carbon Neutral” is Not Good Enough in Energy Master Plan”

New Jersey Now “Gets” Climate Change. What We Are Still Missing: A Climate Vision for Montgomery County, Maryland: Should We Be Doing This in New Jersey?: Part 6


It’s January 1, 2030.

Montgomery County, the most populous county in Maryland, was recognized today – Day 1 of the International Decade for Emergency Climate Action – by President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Congress and the United Nations as the first Post Carbon(P-C) community in the United States and the largest jurisdiction on the planet to reduce its net Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions to zero, while also removing millions of tons of GHGs from the atmosphere.

The county government in partnership with its one million residents achieved this ‘moonshot’ goal through the transformation of its energy, transportation, building and agricultural systems, while strengthening the ability of its residents and businesses to withstand the increasingly frequent and severe physical and socio/economic shocks resulting from accelerating climate change.

Join me as I share how Montgomery – a wealthy, highly diverse, well-educated majority-minority community [2] – got to be a P-C community and what it now looks like. Continue reading “New Jersey Now “Gets” Climate Change. What We Are Still Missing: A Climate Vision for Montgomery County, Maryland: Should We Be Doing This in New Jersey?: Part 6”

The Green New Deal is Now Every State’s Call to Action

Bringing the Green New Deal home

Writing in the Janesville, WI GazetteExtra, John Imes writes:

The Green New Deal resolution introduced in Congress calls for a massive U.S. mobilization over 10 years to achieve the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions while creating millions of high-wage jobs and sustainable economic growth. Unfortunately, while the science and need for federal action on climate change are clear, we can’t expect serious policymaking on the topic to come out of Washington until 2021 at the earliest.

Fortunately, it’s a new day in Wisconsin and the state is well positioned to make headway on many of the goals and objectives as outlined in the Green New Deal. For example…

Well, it’s also a new day in New Jersey, and indeed in every other state, and since we’re here, let’s do the comparison.
Continue reading “The Green New Deal is Now Every State’s Call to Action”

New Jersey Now “Gets” Climate Change. What We Are Still Missing: Focus State Support for a Carbon Tax at the Federal Level: Part 5

By Mike Aucott[1]

The idea of putting a broadly-applied price on carbon dioxide emissions from combustion of fossil fuels from all major sectors of the U.S. economy is gaining traction. Several national organizations are actively supporting a carbon tax, including Citizens’ Climate Lobby[2], the Climate Leadership Council[3], the Carbon Tax Center[4], and PUTAPRICEONIT[5].

A number of nations and other jurisdictions already have some form of carbon pricing.  A group of Princeton University students, the Princeton Student Climate Initiative[6], is exploring ways to strengthen New Jersey’s effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions, including development of a state-level carbon tax.

While state-level programs to price carbon could be effective, carbon pricing approaches will be more effective if they are national and, ideally, international in scope.

Continue reading “New Jersey Now “Gets” Climate Change. What We Are Still Missing: Focus State Support for a Carbon Tax at the Federal Level: Part 5”

What We Need to Do Now about GHG Emissions in New Jersey

By Jonathan Cloud

Over the past several decades, scientists have warned us that we need to curtail further greenhouse gas emissions if we wish to keep global warming below 2°C, which many consider a major danger limit for the Earth’s climate. The latest IPCC Special Report suggests that our economy must undergo a series of rapid transformations if we are to have a chance of staying at or below 1.5°C, and going over that could have disastrous consequences for many millions of people. The global emissions trajectory we are on is clearly incapable of even slowing the rate of temperature growth and sea-level rise, and must be reduced dramatically if we are achieve even a modest extension of the time we have before the Earth hits another milestone and potential tipping point.

Both U.S. and NJ emissions have been declining since the early 2000s, and NJ actually hit its 2020 goal of bringing emissions down to 1990 levels by 2008. But reaching the next set of objectives, an 80% reduction by 2050, will be significantly harder. According to a 2017 Rutgers report, “meeting the state’s limit of an 80 percent reduction from the 2006 level by 2050 will require a 75 percent reduction from 2012 emissions.”[1] The UN estimates that global emissions overall must be trending firmly downward by 2020 (just over a year away) if we are to have any hope of staying “well under the 2°C limit,” which is the language of the Paris Accord.

Continue reading “What We Need to Do Now about GHG Emissions in New Jersey”

Finding the Green in Murphy’s ‘Economic Master Plan’

New Jersey’s new “economic development master plan” is embedded in a report issued  by the NJ Economic Development Authority titled “The State of Innovation: Building a Stronger and Fairer New Jersey.” First accounts of the report, such as this one from NJBIZ, mentioned a focus on wage growth, on community college education, on innovation, and on streamlining regulations for small business, but did not specifically mention that clean energy is a major part of the “innovation” focus.

Murphy unveils NJ economic development ‘master plan’
By Daniel J. Munoz, October 1, 2018 at 2:44 PM

Gov. Phil Murphy announces his major economic agenda on Oct. 1, 2018 at ON3 biotechnology campus in Nutley.

Gov. Phil Murphy announces his major economic agenda on Oct. 1, 2018 at ON3 biotechnology campus in Nutley. – (EDWIN J. TORRES/NJ GOVERNOR’S OFFICE)

Gov. Phil Murphy on Monday unveiled his “master plan” aimed at reimagining how the state attracts and keeps jobs and businesses and kick starting New Jersey’s economy, which he said lagged for the past decade under the administration of Chris Christie.

Murphy, at the ON3 biotechnology campus in Passaic County, said his goal is that by 2025 New Jersey will have added 300,000 new jobs, achieved a 4 percent wage growth or an increase of $1,500 in median wages, 40,000 more women and minorities working in STEM fields, $645 million in new venture capital investment, and the employment of 42,000 more women and minorities.

More broadly, Murphy’s economic outline has four parts – investment in people, investment in communities, a build-up of the innovation economy and making government work better for small businesses by streamlining much of the permitting and application processes and bureaucracies online.

Which led us initially to wonder “where’s the green in Murphy’s new economic master plan?” Fortunately the answer is pretty clear—it’s a key part of the Innovation Economy, and already getting some new attention at the agency.

Continue reading “Finding the Green in Murphy’s ‘Economic Master Plan’”

New Jersey Now “Gets” Climate Change. What We Are Still Missing: Starting with Organizational Culture: Part 2

By Matt Polsky and Lawrence Furman

You may have caught the release of the latest IPPC report two weeks ago. That report, Global Warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (IPPC 2018), found that the intense damage of droughts, floods, and everything that goes with that, anticipated to occur at 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, will occur at this lower concentration, and earlier, by 2040.

It mentions the term “transformation,” saying “avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has ‘no documented historic precedent” “within just a few years (Davenport 2018).” We’ll mention that term a little later. But a major implication is that we’re going to have to extend our reach, the required speed of getting there, and fundamentally question business-as-usual assumptions which, consciously or not, justify seeking the much smaller, incremental levels of change we usually pursue and, to those of us on this issue, had seemed acceptable.

However, the report says levels of greenhouse gas emissions would have to drop to zero by 2050 (which sounds like a close cousin to New Jersey’s 100% renewable energy goal).

Continue reading “New Jersey Now “Gets” Climate Change. What We Are Still Missing: Starting with Organizational Culture: Part 2”

New Jersey Now “Gets” Climate Change. What We Are Still Missing: Introduction: Part 1

By Matt Polsky, Lawrence Furman, Jonathan Cloud, Caitlyn Montgomery

New Jersey is finally taking climate change seriously. The Murphy Administration has several policy initiatives on or directly related to it, including some with atypically ambitious goals. An increasing number of well-attended forums are being held in the State, with speakers from some environmental groups, and a couple of keynotes from the First Lady, Tammy Murphy.  Rutgers University has gone from having a relatively minimal presence to becoming a major player in both climate science and now policy, through the New Jersey Climate Adaptation Alliance. NJ Spotlight is running stories. The directly related area of clean energy is getting a lot of attention, including through the Energy Master Plan process and legislation.

Still, what isn’t being noticed at several forums is that we’re still missing a lot of possibilities and opportunities to do more to address climate change.

Two of the authors have attended many climate change conferences over the years, including more recent ones, such as at Rutgers University, Ramapo College, the League of Conservation Voters, Centenary University, Montclair State University, and many others. While important information is always presented, both the analyses, recommendations, and even perspectives are invariably incomplete. Panelists are often “names” or the heads of traditional groups, which is important, but they, too, do not offer the complete picture. Forums at Rutgers typically have minimal if any opportunity for real audience participation. Those oriented to students offer a limited scope of explicit messages. They emphasize advocacy and activism on voter registration, such issues as protesting proposed pipelines, supporting certain bills in the Legislature, certain actions their universities could take like divesting from fossils fuels. They identify “bad guy” companies.

Certainly these are important, but they do not mention the companies that have stepped up to support staying in the Paris Agreement, which hints at larger possibilities. They do not usually offer a lot of creative ideas, which students of all people really need to hear. They do not say or imply that it will be anything but easy to tackle climate change, or that the usually narrow paths provided will be far from sufficient. Indeed, addressing climate change will likely be the challenge of their generation!

These conferences also reveal mindset traps that make implementing or even conceiving of very large scale changes more difficult, like we can either do mitigation or resiliency. This particularly misleading either/or has gotten better, as now we hear more of “both.” But another is that there is no purpose or recognition of the need to talk to conservatives or Trump voters about addressing climate change. They’re not part of the picture; or worse, are seen as unchangeable “deniers.” Even though we’re saying we need huge carbon emission reductions, somehow we’ll work around the need for behavioral changes from them to reduce their carbon emissions.

Continue reading “New Jersey Now “Gets” Climate Change. What We Are Still Missing: Introduction: Part 1”

The Transformation Game

Having Transformation Go Viral in New Jersey

New Jersey, like the rest of the world, is in a period of profound transition. As we come grips with the fact that humanity’s impact on the planet is creating serious risks for all of us, and that each of us must do what we can, where we are, to make a difference—we simultaneously realize that our individual actions are insufficient, and that we need, at all levels, transformational change. We need to foster an awareness within both local and global communities that change is both essential and inevitable. Whether we’re concerned with climate change, or biodiversity loss, or social injustice, it’s clear that above all we need to restructure our economy, to make it cleaner, and fairer, and more restorative of Earth’s systems in order to achieve any degree of sustainable prosperity.

For many people, the sheer size and scope of this challenge may seem beyond their ability to comprehend, so they withdraw into narrower realms of life — making a living, maintaining a relationship, or pursuing “professional development.” Those who do recognize what the planet confronts us with may become cynical and resigned, get burned out, or simply feel overwhelmed and unable to take any meaningful action. The challenge, in this game, is to engage with other social change agents in a common search for the levers of regenerative transformation.

Continue reading “The Transformation Game”