Tag Archives: superstorm Sandy

All, Environment, Protection

Proposed NJ State Master Plan not good for nature or people

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Byram NJ Village Center concept (in the Highlands)Christie seems hot at the moment, but New Jersey residents don’t have much reason to put our faith in him. Since becoming Governor, Christie has made war on the most vulnerable residents of the state and on the environment, and he is still moving full steam ahead. In fact, the new Master Plan his people are about to approve calls for major development in the same areas recently devastated by Superstorm Sandy. Jeff Tittel, Director the Sierra Club’s New Jersey chapter, shares this chilling thought with a New Jersey public just beginning to grapple with the long-term recovery implications of Superstorm Sandy, “Instead of trying to protect critical infrastructure and site it in safe locations, under this plan, our investments will be washed out to sea or flooded.” Tittle elaborates:

This Plan clearly violates the Highlands, Pinelands, and State Planning Act. If this Plan gets adopted in its current form we plan to challenge it in the courts. This plan ignores science, capacity planning, protection of natural resources, and sound planning. The plan promotes development in the wrong places and does nothing to protect people in the future from flooding, storm surges, sea level rise, and other consequences of climate change. We … hope significant changes are made before it comes before the Commission again.”

We cannot afford to let ourselves be fooled by Christie’s highly theatrical public personna. Transparent government remains a concept anathema to this man and his administration. Tittle told me yesterday, “The Master Plan wasn’t adopted because they violated OPRA and didn’t give 48 hours advance notice of meeting to approve it (and they haven’t yet scheduled a new date).” He adds,

This plan actually promotes growth in areas that have just been devastated by Superstorm Sandy. It designates as priority and alternative growth areas places that are still feeling the aftermath of Sandy and feel time and time again the impacts of flooding. The plan does not exclude environmentally sensitive areas, but actually promotes growth there. Sea Bright, Mantoloking, Bound Brook, Little Ferry, Lincoln Park, Toms River, Seaside, and Wayne are all growth areas under the plan. There is no hazard planning or adaption planning to address storm surges and sea level rise. A study by Rutgers University four years ago found that given the storm surges as a result of climate change, 9% of New Jersey’s land area could be under water. We should be increasing protections in those areas, not promoting more growth.

A NJ Spotlight story quotes Bill Wolfe, director of the New Jersey chapter of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), says: “This plan cannot be a framework for coastal recovery.” He criticized the revision as an economic development strategy that ignores the land-use mandates at the core of the prior state plan. “It’s a wakeup call to deal with global warming,’’ Wolfe said, referring to the storm while suggesting the state needs to set up a coastal commission to oversee the rebuilding of the Jersey Shore.

I’m looking into how New Jersey residents can influence the Master Plan review process at the state and local levels, but it isn’t so easy to understand. Mr. Tittle suggests “Write to the Governor and the State Planning Commission to protest the currently proposed plan.” Watch out for more information – as I find it, I’ll share it.

All, Energy, Environment, Justice, Nature, New solutions, Protection, Water

Is Climate Change real?

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It is, according to more politicians, academicians, public figures and the United States Government: the EPA predicts coastal sees to rise and extreme weather events like Hurricanes to become more frequent.
US EPA carbon emisisons data
Bloomberg.com reports

Here’s what we know: an overwhelming majority of scientists tell us that the Earth’s climate is heating largely due to rising greenhouse gas emissions, which, in turn, is driving more extreme weather and climate events. The underlying changes–warmer oceans, more intense precipitation events, and rising sea levels–are significant contributors to storms like Sandy…

U.S. politicians’ silence on climate change is not only out of step with the rest of the world, but also with the American people, the vast majority of whom are concerned about climate change.

The human and economic costs of Hurricane Sandy and other extreme weather events are abundantly clear. In 2011, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there were 14 extreme weather and climate events of more than $1 billion in the United States, totaling approximately $55 billion. Looking at the bigger picture, a recent report found that the failure to act on climate change is likely to cost the world economy 1.7 percent of GDP, approximately $1.2 trillion per year in the near term, with the figure expected to double by 2030.

Shifting to clean energy opens new economic opportunities, including taking advantage of the $2.3 trillion global clean energy market expected to emerge in the next decade (pdf).

CNN seems to have become a believer since Sandy, too, and they’ve brought in heavy hitting guest writers to tell the public about it. MacArthur Fellow, Stony Brook University professor and president of Blue Ocean Institute, Carl Safina, writes as a CNN special guest

Reporters share their photos with CNN Obstacles and challenges after Sandy Mom can’t get help; two sons die NY mayor: Marathon won’t hurt recovery Search for gas gets more desperate
Sea levels are rising. They’ve been rising since the last ice age and that rise has been accelerating since the Industrial Revolution. We’ve had fair and continual and increasing warning. And yet, small coastal communities and cities as large as New York have done essentially nothing to prepare.
Over decades, we filled many wetlands that are the natural buffers to floods. Shrinking the area of our wetlands has left adjacent areas more prone to flooding.
As the world continues warming, the warming tends to intensify storms. New York has been hit with two hurricanes in two years. That’s unusual. And since at least Katrina, scientists have warned that hurricanes take their strength from the heat of the ocean’s surface.

And Chris Field, Global Ecology Department Chair of the Carnegie Institution for Science and co-chair of a working group tasked with assessing climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), writes as another CNN special guest,

Climate change is occurring now. We see its consequences in hotter temperatures, higher sea levels and shifted storm tracks. In many parts of the world, we are also seeing an increase in the fraction of rainfall that comes in the heaviest events. When it rains, increasingly it pours.
Climate change over the next couple of decades is already largely baked into the system, but changes beyond that are mostly in our hands. As we learn more about the links between climate change and extreme events, it will benefit all of us to think hard about the opportunities and challenges of getting a handle on climate change, so we control it and not vice versa.

Van Jones (as yet another special CNN contributor) proposes a solution that won’t only address climate change, but will improve the United States financial outlook too:

We have just the answer. It’s not a new idea, but as the two parties face off over the federal budget, it could be the path forward. There’s a tool we can use to answer the public’s call for more jobs – without cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security: a carbon tax.

One analysis by the Congressional Budget Office says a moderate, $20-per-ton tax on carbon emissions could raise $1.25 trillion over 10 years. And the savings don’t stop there. For decades, the oil and coal industries have passed along their costs to the rest of us, in the form of asthma treatment, emergency room visits, doctor bills and missed days of school and work. Combined with droughts, wildfires, hurricanes and severe weather events like Superstorm Sandy, rising levels of carbon in the atmosphere cost our nation an estimated $70 billion each year.

Everybody has to make up her own mind about what to believe, but I have no problem all believing that climate change is real, and making changes in my living habits to reverse global warming, and I want my government and business to do the same.