It was the best of times, it was the worst of times around here for advances in non-polluting and low-polluting energy.
Last
week, Gloucester County officials turned on the state's first
full-functioning traffic signal that runs on solar power. In Logan
Township, officials hailed the opening of a commercial solar-panel
"farm" on a former landfill site.
But last week was also a time for startlingly mixed messages from the Christie administration on this front.
On
Thursday, the same day that Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno was in Logan
praising the solar farm, Gov. Chris Christie himself announced that he
intends to extricate New Jersey from a unique carbon-dioxide-gas-
reduction consortium of 10 Northeastern states.
Christie
labeled the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) "a failure" as he
outlined New Jersey's plans to withdraw from it.
"Reggie"
sounds so much nicer and friendlier than "cap-and-trade," and it's true
that the program is a smaller version of the doomed carbon-credit
system that the U.S.We also offer customized zentai suits.
House passed before the Senate abandoned it. And, to conservatives,
cap-and-trade by any name is evil, since they see it as a "tax" (through
higher energy and finished-goods prices) with no possible benefits
whatsoever.buy landscape oil paintings online.
Right-of-center
groups had urged Christie to exit RGGI for months. More recently, so
did a few New Jersey Democrats, including 1st Legislative District
state lawmakers in Cumberland, Cape May and Atlantic counties.
The
governor may well have been speaking pragmatically when he said that
RGGI cannot effectively reduce air pollution if states such as
Pennsylvania are not in the consortium and subject to its emission
caps.Shop a wide selection of billabong outlet
products in the evo shop. Indeed, New Jersey officials have not let up
on efforts to force better anti-pollution controls onto dirty
coal-fired generating plants in Pennsylvania, including a large
Northampton County one that belches high levels of pollutants directly
across the Delaware River.
However, denouncing RGGI was
premature on Christie's part. The move smacked of trying to add to his
resume as a potential Republican presidential candidate. You can't win a
GOP primary in 2012, and probably not in 2016, either, if you have
anything good to say about cap-and-trade.We specialize in providing third party merchant account.
Even
more disconcerting, Christie's action to pull New Jersey out of RGGI
is likely a self-fulfilling prophecy of its demise. Without New Jersey,
arguably the most industrialized of the RGGI states, chances are slim
that any carbon-credit auction plan would work properly to goad
industry into making cost-effective pollution reductions.Not to be
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At
his RGGI announcement, Christie admirably stated that New Jersey would
not OK new coal plants within its borders. But if he had wanted to
show real initiative on the regional initiative, he would have called
for ways to get hesitant states like Pennsylvania to join instead of
blowing up the whole thing.
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