He got a new collar for his 16 week birthday!
And he’s loving playing with the falling oak leaves camping in the Ozarks: (Ozark – St. Francis National Forest)
Energy Master Plan, BPU Reviews, And DEP Regulations Are Not Based On The Most Basic Cost-Benefit Concepts
A few months ago, I wrote about the release of a National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Report on the huge trillion dollars costs of the climate emergency, and I criticized the media’s misleading reporting about those costs, see:
NJ Spotlight once again printed these corporate lies about costs as facts, and did so with no rebuttal and no mention of the well documented costs of the climate emergency, known in the jargon as “the social costs of carbon” (SCC). EPA issued that Draft SCC Report last year, and it got no coverage by NJ Spotlight or other NJ media that I am aware of.
Amazingly, just days ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report on the HUGE costs of climate driven storms and catastrophes: (Read the NOAA Report)
The so called “costs” of the transition to renewable energy and decarbonization are only relevant in the context of the benefits (in this case, the avoided costs) of the climate emergency.
But the media is not the only institution that ignores the huge costs of the climate emergency (and the huge $7 trillion dollars in annual subsidies to fossil fuels – see this IMF Report). And these so called “costs” [of transition to renewable energy and decarbonization] are actually investments.
The private sector ignores these costs – and so does government – which economists term “externalities” and examples of “market failure”. This is a critically important omission, because the most basic justification for government intervention is to address market failure and BPU and DEP are responsible for that intervention in energy and environmental matters.
But there are no formal BPU analytical and planning methods and/or DEP regulatory requirements that mandate that policies, regulatory approvals, and infrastructure investments decisions fully and transparently consider and reflect the costs of the climate emergency.
I’ve long been a harsh critic of cost benefit analysis (CBA) – when your house is on fire, you do not worry about how much the fire truck costs – so it is shocking that I must note that NJ State government fails to apply the most basic concepts of CBA in energy planning and environmental regulation.
So today, I was stunned to read a NJ Spotlight story on the release of the fifth National Climate Assessment and note that the focus of the coverage was on the costs of the climate emergency (NJ Spotlight):
The report devoted a full chapter to the economic impacts of climate change, noting that communities will face high costs for defending coastal areas from rising seas or elevating roads, but may also enjoy economic opportunities such as more jobs in renewable energy.
But unfortunately, Spotlight narrowed the issues mainly to the lack of federal flood insurance coverage and risks and costs of coastal flooding.
But, to their credit, the coverage did allude to serious market failure:
Although there is “ample” private capital available that could be used for adaptation projects, there is a perception among the business community that those projects won’t return enough on investment, the report said.
And it did broach the long ignored and essentially taboo subject of “strategic retreat”:
The Rutgers projections for sea-level rise are broadly in line with those in the new report. It projects seas around the U.S. coastline will rise another 11 inches by 2050. That would leave some areas of the Jersey Shore uninhabitable, raising the prospect that some coastal communities in places such as Cape May and Cumberland counties might be required to move inland, a process known as “managed retreat.”
But it did so in a misleading way by presenting the DEP’s Blue Acres program in a favorable light. As I’ve written many times, that program – which is under funded, toothless, scattershot, and reliant on voluntary willing sellers – is not a sound plan or regulatory strategy to effectively implement a real strategic retreat program.
While it is an improvement to see Spotlight finally report on the costs of the climate emergency, and mention market failure by the private sector and the need for “managed retreat”, I sent the following note to NJ Spotlight reporter Jon Hurdle to clarify misleading reporting and urge that future coverage of energy costs incorporate the costs of the climate emergency:
Jon – you wrote this:
“But nearly all the new money is for mitigating climate emissions with wind and solar power and electric vehicle charging stations, leaving little for adaptation.”
That may be correct nationally or globally, but exactly the OPPOSITE is true in NJ – just ask DEP and BPU for the data on investments in adaptation versus compliance costs for emissions reductions (mitigation). Far more is spent on adaptation than emissions reduction. For example, the paltry RGGI allowance price is the ONLY cost imposed on carbon polluters (and that’s only for a segment of the energy sector).
It would be nice now that NJ Spotlight has finally covered some of the cost issues if those costs could be integrated in the coverage of the so called “high costs” of the renewable energy transition (and those “costs” are actually investments and they all pass the traditional cost-benefit test, but that is never analyzed by BPU or DEP and never reported by media).
Wolfe
Developer BlackMail Extracts Premium Land Price
Political Deal Preserves Corrupt Status Quo And Avoids Real Reforms
NJ Spotlight today reported on the deal for the State Agricultural Development Committee to purchase almost 600 acres of prime farmland in rural White Township to avoid construction of a massive warehouse development as some kind of win and a model for the future, see:
It is a terrible deal and it exposes the total failure of NJ State, regional, and local land use planning and DEP regulation.
It is a classic example of perverse incentives, where private and public sector actors are rewarded for doing all the wrong things.
It diverts environmental, land use, and local community activists from real effective solutions.
It uses public money to provide cover for the failure of State and local officials and agencies.
It wastes scarce public land preservation money on developer artificially inflated land values.
It continues a pattern of reactionary expenditure of scarce public preservation dollars on a scattershot political deal that bears no relationship to sound land use planning or environmental conservation planning or to rational science based priorities.
Here is my note to NJ Spotlight reporter Jon Hurdle, which I copied to the usual suspects:
———- Original Message ———-
From: Bill WOLFE <>
To: “jonhurdle@gmail.com” <jonhurdle@gmail.com>, “ferencem@njspotlightnews.org” <ferencem@njspotlightnews.org>, “tmoran@starledger.com” <tmoran@starledger.com>
Date: 11/13/2023 2:26 PM PST
Subject: White Twsp – warehouse land purchase
Jon – your reporting of the deal for the State ADC to purchase 600 acres of prime farmland in rural White Township gets the story exactly wrong.
You report this as some kind of win and good public policy.
In reality it is an illustration of the total failure of NJ’s State and regional land use planning and DEP’s environmental regulation. Let me be specific: 1) The toothless State Development and Redevelopment Plan; 2) the local Master Plan and zoning pursuant to the Municipal Land Use Law, and 3) the various DEP land use and water regulatory programs: a) water quality management planning (land use and sewer infrastructure); b) stormwater management; c) water quality standards (anti-degradation policy, steam buffers, and non-point source pollution) and permitting (impacts on the Delaware River).
It is an illustration of “perverse incentives” – where taxpayers bail outs of towns provide incentives for continued poor planning and zoning (and reckless private sector investment and development decisions).
It is an illustration of reactive approach and expenditure of scare preservation money based on no planning at all under NJ’s farmland preservation and Green Acres programs, where scarce public money is spent paying huge development inflated land prices for scattershot lands that bear no relationship to any land preservation or environmental conservation or land use plan.
Politically, grass roots activists are being diverted from focusing on the State planning and regulatory tools that can work and from holding government officials accountable.
There is not enough money in Trenton to buy it all – that’s why we have State land use planning and regulation.
Do better.
Wolfe
[End Note] A critical comment from a knowledgeable NJ reader:
Dep can kill most of these projects WQMP , stormwater etc Highlands can so can Pinelands – so can DOT – highway access permits , dent road and intersection improvements – Local finance board because of TIfs or redevelopment agreements-County Planning Bds because of impact to county infrastructure – its all BS Kabuki dance
The Last Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine
(Caption: 4 Peaks Wilderness Area, Arizona)
There’s danger on the edge of town
Ride the king’s highway
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway West, baby. ~~~~ The End. The Doors (1967) (hit the link and turn up the volume)
This really is The End (one of my favorite songs).
It’s The Last Picture Show (one of my favorite movies).
I stole the theme for our epic 7 year western roadtrip: “Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine” from the Doors’ classic song “The End” (hit link above).
That song is even more true today than when Jim Morrison wrote it in 1967:
Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
You think that’s twisted? Over the top?
Try thinking about our current Greenhouse Gas Chamber.
Or the openly self declared Israeli ethnic cleansing and Genocide on Gaza (and the West Bank), which is openly supported, funded, and praised by President Biden, the entire US Government, the entire US Congress, and the entire US corporate media, while those calling for a cease fire and peace are denounced as Nazi’s and anti-semites.
Think about the fact that Trump is holding openly fascist rallies and promising “vengeance” – and that he is likely to be re-elected in ’24.
Let all that sink in.
All the adults – not the children – are insane.
Many times, in my green (not blue) bus, I’ve contemplated these lyrics:
The West is the best
The West is the best
Get here and we’ll do the rest
The blue bus is calling us
The blue bus is calling us
Driver, where are you taking us?
Where?
As Johnny Cash sang, “I’ve been everywhere man” (me too!), but right now, the green bus is taking us back east.
We’ll soon be in The Last Picture Show landscapes.
Roadtrip done. Over. Finished.
It hurts to set you free
But you’ll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to dieThis is the end.\
In principle a Party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in bed. It was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or sleeping he would be taking part in some kind of communal recreation: to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity. But this evening as he came out of the Ministry the balminess of the April air had tempted him. The sky was a warmer blue than he had seen it that year, and suddenly the long, noisy evening at the Centre, the boring, exhausting games, the lectures, the creaking camaraderie oiled by gin, had seemed intolerable. On impulse he had turned away from the bus-stop and wandered off into the labyrinth of London, first south, then east, then north again, losing himself among unknown streets and hardly bothering in which direction he was going. ~~~ (1984, Part 1, Chap. 8. George Orwell)