R. WILLIAM POTTER | MAY 23, 2019
Calling on the governor to order a freeze on pipeline and power-plant projects ‘while we still have a chance’ to mitigate worst impacts of climate change
For anyone even remotely concerned with the clear and present dangers of global warming and climate change — catastrophic sea-level rise, a million species extinguished, extreme weather rendering some areas uninhabitable — there is a must-read report focused on the New Jersey impacts and what we must do at least to mitigate these apocalyptic forecasts.
The report is “Fighting Climate Change in NJ: The Urgent Case for a Moratorium on all Fossil Fuel Projects,” which gives the lie to the myth that anything written by a committee will be a stylistic mess. Not this one. Researched and composed by a “gang of nine” on behalf of a “growing coalition of more than 50 environmental and grassroots groups” called “Empower NJ,” the report makes a powerful and readable case for stopping the eight natural gas pipeline/compressor station projects, and four gas-fired power plants, currently in various stages of development in New Jersey.
The Empower NJ report opens by reciting the irrefutable fact that it will be impossible for New Jersey to achieve Gov. Phil Murphy’s directive in Executive Order 28. That order commits the state to “achieving 100% clean energy [by 2050] and directs the adoption of an updated Energy Master Plan … detailing how this goal will be achieved.” But it clearly can’t be achieved “if these fossil fuel projects, transporting or burning natural gas mined from the fracking fields of Pennsylvania are completed and become operational.”
The two scenarios cannot be reconciled. We can increase dependence on currently cheap natural gas that emits both carbon and methane — which is 86 times as damaging as carbon in the short term — or we can advance upon a 100-percent renewable energy future. But we can’t have both.
