A coalition of more than 30 environmental, labor, and community organizations says climate change poses a massive threat to New Jersey and is urging the state to do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase clean energy.
Dan Fatton is executive director of the Work Environment Council. He says the collation is a ray of hope in the Trump era.
“When we see the news that’s coming out of Washington, it’s fairly horrifying. We’ve seen the clampdown on EPA, the gag order on climate, the removal of climate change from the White House website. So, we know that we need states to take strong action if we actually want to address what is a global crisis.”
Coalition members say Governor Christie has been resisting measures to mitigate the effect of climate change.
New Jersey Sierra Club director Jeff Tittel says it will take time to get more legislation enacted.
“There’s going to be differences between some other groups and battles between solar and others, but now is the time to fix these things so next year when we have a new governor and that’s less than a year from now, we can roll out a lot of bills and get them passed even if this governor vetoes them.”
Amy Goldsmith, the executive director of Clean Water Action, hopes state lawmakers don’t wait until a new governor takes office next year .
“New Jersey has a long history of having environmental champions. We’ve had a little bit of a drought, but we want to turn that around and we’ll see what happens in the next six to nine months where the legislature might feel a little more freedom with an outgoing governor.”