With pollution on the rise in New Jersey, students and environmental advocates alike think Governor-elect Chris Christie needs to implement environmental protection and clean energy into an industry during his administration.
Citizen-based environmental advocacy organization Environment New Jersey recently analyzed data collected by the U.S. Department of Energy that indicates pollution in the state has risen 16 percent from 1990 to 2007.
“If we do not do anything about global warming, we’ll lose most of our beaches and it’ll have a huge impact on the economy,” said Global Warming and Clean Energy Advocate for Environment New Jersey Matt Elliot.
The effects of this rise include deteriorating air quality and global warming, and New Jersey is known to have the worst quality in the nation, he said.
One of the main factors that caused this rise is transportation, which accounted for 53 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, New Jersey Advocate at Tri-State Transportation Campaign Zoe Baldwin said.
“We need to address [transportation]. We can’t look at just energy,” she said. “Transportation is the backbone of our economy and if we don’t work to change both our travel patterns and the modes of travel we use … we’re never going to be able to reach the goals that we set out in the Global Warming Response Act.”
According to Christie’s official campaign Web site, he plans to concentrate on renewable energy, protect open space and clean up the land, but does not mention transportation.
Christie could not be reached for comment at press time.
Baldwin said the legislation and Christie should put some safeguards on the New Jersey Transportation Trust Fund Authority, which pays for all New Jersey’s transportation capital projects.
“Right now we underfund NJ Transit and its operations,” Baldwin said. “What that means is, while we’re still building projects, the agency will soon have a very difficult time keeping the buses and trains running.”
New Jersey took steps to address the issue of global warming with the establishment of the Global Warming Response Act under the Corzine administration in July 2007.
“The act established two statewide greenhouse gas limits, the first designed to stabilize emissions by 2020, and a second more ambitious limit to be achieved by 2050,” said New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Karen Hershey. “It recognized that both immediate and long term actions would be needed to meet those limits.”
In addition, the act directed various state agencies to coordinate and develop strategies to stabilize and then reduce greenhouse gas concentrations statewide, Hershey said.
Christie thinks that by creating an energy industry, it is an opportunity to recover good-paying middle-class jobs that were lost by focusing on production, according to his Web site.
Some students think global warming is an issue that should be addressed as soon as possible by the administration.
“Global warming should be at least one of the top three priorities in [Christie’s] list because of all the signs of global warming right now,” said Noreen Sheikh, a School of Environmental and Biological Sciences sophomore.
Sheikh said transportation is not only an important part of fighting global warming, but also saves individuals money when it comes to travel.
Although School of Arts and Sciences junior Jason Moreira agrees that encouraging mass transit is effective, he believes it would be difficult to convince people to take public transportation.
“In America … people love their cars, they love their own space, they love their own autonomy, so it’s kind of a hard sell,” Moreira said. “If you’re in the city you might not mind taking a bus, but if the bus ride is a half hour to your job, then I don’t know how that would work.”
NJ advocates ask Christie to go green with energy reform
Published: Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Updated: Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Be the first to comment on this article!