Delaware Bayshore Struggling With Impacts of Climate Change – Christie Administration Abdicates State’s Responsibility
Nothing will change unless and until “advocates” like ALS and NJF and the media begin to educate the public about this abdication and force the Gov. to respond.
[Update: 9/23/13 – We applaud NJ Future for rising to the challenge we posed above, see today’s Op-Ed: IT’S TIME TO CONNECT THE DOTS BETWEEN RISING SEA LEVELS AND REBUILDING – Will ALS weigh in too? – end update]
NJ Spotlight has a good story today on how communities along the Delaware Bayshore are already suffering from and struggling to respond to climate change driven sea level rise – you should read the whole thing, see: DEFEND OR RETREAT: CUMBERLAND COUNTY WRESTLES WITH RISING SEAS.
But the story tends to focus on individual problems and individual homeowner decisions, and county government’s role – all while ignoring State government’s role and responsibilities.
[Update: The story also over-states the role of full moon and high tide, which necessarily reduces the role of climate change, which is a subtle form of climate change denial.]
Why does the media so consistently ignore State government’s lead responsibility, and thereby give the Christie Administration a huge pass?
Are they afraid of the Governor?
Planning for adaptation to climate change is not and can not be an individual responsibility or a local or county government job.
It is a state government responsibility – under state and federal law.
The Christie Administration has abdicated that responsibility for political reasons – the Gov. ideologically opposes DEP regulation and his right wing and corporate backers deny climate change.
Now the “advocates”, like Christie Administration funded and friendly ALS and NJ Future are providing cover and masking that fact by their focus on local government projects.
As we’ve written several times, NJ is the only state in the northeast without a Climate Change Adaptation Plan.
The Christie Administration has blocked, gutted, defunded, deregulated, weakened, privatized, outsourced, or just plain ignored all the other State level policy and planning tools that could address the multiple critical climate issues, including 1) the State Plan; 2) the Global Warming Response Act; 3) the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative; 4) The Energy Master Plan; 5) the Water Supply Master Plan; 6) the Water Quality Planning program; 7) the Drinking Water Quality Institute; 8. CAFRA and coastal planning; 9) regional planning in the Highlands and Pinelands (it appears that some science is being done in the Meadowlands); and 10) NJ’s power on the Delaware River Basin Commission. [In fairness, DEP did adopt emergency Flood Hazard rules to incorporate FEMA ABFE’s – but has ignored necessary updates for inland river flood hazard maps.]
There is literally NO ACTION on any of these State programs – while reforms, like a Coastal Commission, have been opposed and basically blocked by the Gov. That is unprecedented and truly remarkable.
The Christie Administration has embarked on a systematic and outrageous abdication and rollback effort- and just at the time that we must ramp up all those efforts – yet the press has never written about it and so the public is totally uninformed.
Nothing will change unless and until “advocates” like ALS and NJF and the media begin to educate the public about this abdication and force the Gov. to respond.
[End Note: and the Legislature needs to step up oversight.]