New Jersey went into the November elections with many pundits arguing that the Republicans had a chance to chip away yet again at the Democratic majorities in Trenton, perhaps even gain control of one of the two legislative houses. They argued that the issue of the moment, the issue that would provide Republicans with the chance to continue the success they saw two years previous, was Gov. Phil Murphy’s green agenda.
They were wrong, as pundits so frequently are. The Democrats held the Senate, gained in the Assembly and set themselves up for a push to hold the governor’s office when Murphy can no longer run for reelection in 2025.
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We need dialogue, but Gov. Murphy continues to issue
mandates while the public becomes better informed … and more skeptical.
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No matter how the 2025 election goes, the message that many Democrats have taken from their success this year is that the voters support the Murphy administration’s fight against climate change, a battle thus far fought through executive orders and agency rulemaking.
Someone needs to explain how the predictions of electoral outcomes were wrong, but we are still supposed to accept the rationale for what was motivating the voters. The political prognosticators couldn’t be wrong on both the outcomes and the motivation, could they?
The green agenda in Trenton takes many forms and it is being pushed at rapid speed.
We have the offshore wind initiative. Supporters now say the Danish firm Orsted’s withdrawal from its commitments to build two wind farms off the coast is just a setback. Already a new solicitation for a third wind farm is underway and Orsted is making noise about selling its leases and permits to a new developer.
The state Department of Environmental Protection has issued its Advanced Clean Car II rule, setting 2035 as the year when only fully electric new cars will be able to be sold in the Garden State.
The state Board of Public Utilities has been tasked with facilitating incentives for the conversion of home heating systems to electricity. It is a regulatory board that has demonstrated that it can be trusted to follow the governor’s directions without compunction.
Meanwhile the DEP is pushing its new land regulations that will require taking into account projected climate impacts in order to secure permits.
Playing a supporting role in this smorgasbord of efforts to defend against climate change are the electric power generators whose target for 100% clean-energy generation was accelerated from 2050 to 2035.
We are being told by the same people who misread the results of the election that the voters have given their seal of approval for this chaotic, disconnected effort to have in 2035, a date just 12 years hence, a world transformed.
It is a world in which we can only buy new cars that are electric vehicles, a world in which we would have already electrified 400,000 homes by 2030, a world in which we would have expanded coastal zone management rules and a world in which New Jersey would have national leadership in the fight against climate change.
To underpin it all, 100% clean electric power, generated at levels sufficient to support the electrification agenda, will be fully in place and traveling over a renovated grid capable of handling the new volumes.
We have no idea what this will cost and who will pay for it. We don’t know who the casualties will be in this process, for casualties there must be in this wholesale transformation. The unknowns multiply daily.
Yet somehow, we are being told the election that gave Democrats added seats in the Legislature was a mandate for all of it.
There are a multitude of reasons, many probably local, why races went the way they went. But the wins fell short of being called a mandate for anything. They simply were not big enough for that. It is also possible that too great a denial of the need for measures to fight climate change has its own baggage with the voters. It is entirely possible that the voters want more than just blind opposition. Many factors play their role.
The elections in November were not a mandate for the state’s climate change agenda. The danger in allowing that falsehood to gain traction is that it further justifies a lack of effort on the part of the state’s Democratic leadership to open the kimono and share with the public a real plan for decarbonization and adaption to the projected threats of climate change. A plan that shows realistic possibilities, downsides as well as upsides, costs and where the burdens will be placed.
Until we have that and the dialogue that would accompany it, politicos will continue to seek mandates in the election tea leaves while the public grows more restive.
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From the Bible: “Truthful lips endure forever.” From Proverbs 12:19
