Global Warming showdown in Trenton?
Two controversial bills were introduced in Trenton last week into the lame-duck session. The bills purportedly would implement aspects of the Global Warming Response Act (GWRA) signed by Governor Corzine last July.
The GWRA sets a 20% green house gas emission reduction goal by 2020, and an 80% reduction by the year 2050. That law has been praised as well intentioned but criticized as toothless (see Star Ledger Op-Ed: “No teeth in “tough” pollution law”
http://www.peer.org/docs/nj/07_7_10_wolfe_op_ed.pdf
Given potentially significant economic, energy, and global warming policy issues at stake, these pollution “cap and trade” bills could prompt a debate between energy industry lobbyists and environmentalists, and test the Corzine administration’s commitments to the global warming issue.
Last month, in the wake of Governor Corzine’s high profile trip to Portugal to sign an international global warming aggreement, Corzine said that he expects his cap-and-trade legislation to come out of the lame-duck session (See: Corzine signs climate change pact).
The supreme irony of a former Wall Street CEO trotting onto a world stage in Portugal to sign a symbolic declaration to promote market based solutions and then pledging to ram implementing legislation through a lame-duck session was lost on the media. Praiseworthy media accounts failed to note that the Portugal Agreement lacks any legally binding substantive terms and conditions, and thus fails basic corporate and market tests.