New Jersey can't afford to abandon regional plan

Unfortunately, groups funded by out-of-state oil, gas and coal interests, most notably the multibillionaire Koch brothers, are now paying handsomely to try to mislead New Jersey’s citizens and political leaders about the success of this program.Environment New Jersey, like nearly every major environmental group in the state, has supported RGGI since its inception. It’s a program that works, and we were happy to see New Jersey take a leadership role in establishing the program back in its early days, working in a bipartisan way with governors in other Northeast states to get the program up and running.

Christie has joined the state and the nation’s leading climate scientists in affirming that global warming is real, it’s caused largely by humans and it must be tackled head-on. We agree. Global warming poses a threat to every corner of our state. If left unchecked, sea level rise attributed to global warming will threaten our $30 billion Shore-based tourism economy — one of the biggest economic drivers in our state. Increased heat and smog will cause more deaths in urban and suburban areas alike, and changing climates will threaten the Garden State’s rich agricultural economy. The list, unfortunately, goes on.We need every tool in our tool kit to tackle this problem head-on, and RGGI is one of those tools. It’s working, it’s successful, and moving forward, we need to work together with partner states to make it even more effective.The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is the nation’s first market-based program to reduce global warming pollution. Ten Northeast states, including New Jersey, agreed to set a cap on power plant pollution region-wide, require polluters to pay for their global warming pollution and invest that money into clean energy projects that further reduce pollution and energy demand.Thankfully, last week’s state legislative hearing on Gov. Chris Christie’s plan to withdraw the state from the regional initiative was an important step in the right direction — toward real fact-finding and away from the lies and misinformation flooding our state from dirty out-of-state energy companies and their allies.