Geoff Lewen, of Robbinsville
On June 9, the Robbinsville Town Council did something which occurs all too rarely in New Jersey: they took a stand for their constituents against an overreaching state government by calling for the New Jersey Legislature to repeal the Global Warming Defense Act. This move will undoubtedly provoke the customary howls of protest from the agents of big government, who would prefer we do nothing while the state takes away our liberties one by one.
In commending Governor Christie for withdrawing New Jersey from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), Inc. and calling for the repeal of the global warming legislation that was part and parcel of RGGI, the Robbinsville Town Council recognized a basic truth. RGGI was never about saving the planet: it was all about taxing residents to subsidize the legislature’s latest exercise in crony capitalism.
After all, we achieved twice the carbon reduction targets nearly a decade ahead of schedule, and what was the response? Not celebration, but complaints that the goals were too easy to meet and the carbon credit auction was not making enough money for speculators. RGGI has increased energy rates by $700 per household per year and redistributed the wealth of rich and poor alike to green energy special interests, but has done relatively little to stop carbon pollution.
Approximately every few minutes, developing nations like China and India replace the sum total of New Jersey’s carbon savings over the past decade by pouring millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. In the meantime, according to Phil Jones, the director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995. If a primary research arm of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control (IPCC) can find no statistically significant global warming during a period in which the Asian Industrial Revolution has been dwarfing our carbon emissions, climate science cannot be as “settled” as the global warming acolytes would have us believe.
The sad thing, however, is that while the legislature has been sneaking about creating a market for carbon credit speculators, we have lost sight of the best reason for reducing carbon emissions: quite simply, it is the right thing to do. We have a pastoral responsibility to take care of the earth for future generations, but not to let the government pick winners and losers in the energy market.
In a recent study of personal and economic freedom by Ruger and Sorens of George Mason University, New Jersey ranked next-to-last of states in terms of “individual freedom.” We got to be one of the least free states in the Union in part because our municipal and county governments have not uttered even a peep of protest as the state government has increased its control over us through regulation and taxation. So, before anyone asks, “What has this got to with the town council?” let’s ask, “Why aren’t more town councils doing like Robbinsville and standing up for the people of New Jersey?”
