Thursday - May 26, 2011

NJ Bows Out From Carbon Credit Scam

TRENTON, N.J. — Republican Gov. Chris Christie says New Jersey will exit a 10-state regional greenhouse gas reduction program by the end of the year.

Christie says the program is ineffective at combatting global warming.

“The whole system is not working as it was intended to work. It is a failure,” the governor said Thursday.

The announcement thrilled conservatives, who have been after governors in Northeast states to abandon the effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions by having companies pay for their fossil fuel output.

New Jersey has been in the program reduce carbon dioxide pollution since 2008.

Besides New Jersey, participating states include Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Governor Christie, making another stride to bring his state out of the morass. Forcing businesses to pay for their CO2 output is just one more reason for them to flee the state, taking jobs and tax revenue with them.

An updated version of the article, in which the title has changed to “EPA asks NJ to reconsider leaving emissions pact”:

New Jersey is dropping out of the Northeast’s program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Republican Gov. Chris Christie announced Thursday, calling the pact a failure at cutting pollution and a burden to taxpayers.

The decision to withdraw from the 10-state cap-and-trade program at the end of the year marks a turnaround for New Jersey, a heavily industrialized state that was an early backer of efforts to curb the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming.

Environmentalists were dismayed, while conservatives were thrilled.

“This program is not effective in reducing greenhouse gases and is unlikely to be in the future,” said Christie, a first-term governor and rising GOP star who has been widely mentioned as potential presidential candidate because of his combative stands on teacher unions, government spending and taxes. “It is a failure.”

The federal Environmental Protection Agency urged him to reconsider.

“This is a disappointing step given New Jersey’s legacy of leadership on environmental issues,” said EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan. The EPA’s administrator, Lisa Jackson, was chief of New Jersey’s environmental agency when the state joined the pact, which went into effect in 2008.

Christie is just the latest Republican governor to announce that his state would withdraw from a regional pact to reduce greenhouse gases. Similar agreements in the West and Midwest are struggling. And efforts by the Obama administration to establish a national cap-and-trade program have failed in Congress.

Lisa Jackson was an utter failure as NJ enviro head, making a total mess of several superfund clean up sites and so forth. She was one of Obama’s earliest appointments. Look her up; I’m sure she’s doing as bang-up a job for the feds as she did for our state. Her main qualification seems to be her ability to toe the Green line. As Charlie Sheen would say, “Winning!”

Note the bias in the article from the NY Post here - environmentalists are dismayed, but conservatives are thrilled. Because there is no such thing as a pro-environment Conservative you know. We all run around setting forests on fire, digging our own open pit mines with double extra run off, specialize in mass fawn killing, and so forth. If it’s green, kill it, rape it, burn it.

The cap-and-trade pact “does nothing more than tax electricity, tax our citizens, tax our businesses with no discernible or measurable impact upon our environment,” Christie said. Residential customers in states that participate in the pact paid an average of about 73 cents extra on their monthly electric bill to fund the program. [ Drew: that’s about $50 million per year in NJ ]

Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, disputed the governor’s assessment of the pact’s effectiveness, saying it is working as designed.

He said New Jersey’s greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants had declined 10 percent since 2009. He said the pact was responsible for creating 18,000 jobs in the region and generating $2.3 billion in economic benefits.

Is that right? How many of those 18,000 jobs are in the private sector Mr. Tittel? What? None? Seriously, how many?? And a government program with an immediate 82-to-1 economic payback? And we haven’t heard of this fantastic level of success every hour of every day? Who are you trying to fool, fool?

An actual NJ newspaper, the Bergen Record, explains how the RGGI thing works much better than the NY Post did:

New Jersey is dropping out of the nation’s largest regional effort to reduce greenhouse gases in a move announced by Governor Christie Thursday that was praised by business groups and criticized by environmental advocates.

Ah, at least we now know who those “conservatives” are: business groups, the people who give other people jobs!

“RGGI has not changed behavior and it does not reduce emissions,” Christie said at a news conference in Trenton.

“RGGI does nothing more than tax electricity, tax our citizens, tax our businesses, with no discernable or measurable impact upon our environment,” he said.

Christie’s decision to withdraw by year’s end comes after similar efforts in New Hampshire, Maine and Delaware were met with resistance in recent weeks. New Jersey is the first state to stop [step?] out of the program and some environmentalists fear Christie’s decision could provide momentum for other states to withdraw.

Ah ha! Now we’re getting somewhere!

The move was applauded by business leaders who said RGGI, a cap-and-trade program, drives up energy rates because energy producers who are by forced to buy credits for the carbon they emit pass that cost along to their customers.

“High energy costs, like taxes, just make New Jersey a tougher state in which to do business,” said Philip Kirschner, president of the New Jersey Business & Industry Association.

Today’s announcement is a victory for Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group that has waged much of the opposition in New Jersey and other states.

“By pulling the plug on New Jersey’s participation in the RGGI cap and trade scheme, Governor Christie has stood up for New Jersey’s struggling taxpayers and sent a strong signal that New Jersey is, once again, open for business,” said Steve Lonegan, AFP’s state director and a former mayor of Bogota.

Steve Lonegan, my hero. He ran for Governor in the GOP primary against Christie and lost. While the rest of the country is watching the news, going “Wow, that Christie in New Jersey sure seems like a smart and fearless Conservative!”, compared to Lonegan he’s a spineless Democrat. Lonegan is ... ferocious. Oh don’t get me wrong, Chris Christie’s doing an Ok job. But Steve Lonegan would have almost started a revolution by now. Pure awesomeness.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/26/2011 at 09:20 PM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •  
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