How Climate Change Impacts CMCo.

The Herald will be making a broad and continuing effort to answer some of the most substantial, significant, relevant and controversial questions about the climate, the way it is changing, and how that change will affect our county, through a multi-article series spanning the coming months. 
Given that people in Cape May Countylive at the ocean’s edge, global warming will have a disproportionate impact onthe county’s geography, its businesses, visitors, residents, andecology. 
The Herald has committed itself to gaining and presenting a sufficient understanding of the changing climate to enable everyoneto responsibly move forward. This topic is more relevant now than perhaps ever before.  Cape May County is an epicenter of a climate-inspired revolution of energy production. 
With what would be the nation’s largest offshore wind farm planned off the county’s coast, the Herald will take an in-depth look at the reliability and effectiveness of offshore wind turbines and examine the cost of this type of energy production to consumers, electric companies and the government.
The series will present research into what is known about global warming and its causes and look into the role carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses, are playing in global warming. It will examine how much of the carbon mankind produces is attributable to energy production. This reporting will be based in and rely on science. 
Specific to this county, and more broadly, these articles will investigate what effects global warming will have, how quickly its effects will progress and what is being done to prepare for them. 
This series will examine the different types of fossil fuels used to produce energy – coal, oil and gas — and inspect the impact their carbon offset has on the earth’s temperature.  It will also look into alternatives to fossil fuels beyond offshore wind, and present a similar analysis – reliability, effectiveness and cost – so the reader, and consumer, can easily compare alternatives, like nuclear and solar. 
In these articles, government policies will be distilled and made clear, like Gov. Phil Murphy’s Energy Master Plan, the Paris Climate Agreement and the Green New Deal, so that readers can quickly and easily comprehend what these fervently debated policies and plans really entail. 
The cost of energy will become a focus and the series will examine government subsidies and regulations surrounding energy, and how renewables could change the cost to consumers. The articles will examine what industries will be impacted by a transition to renewables and what economic impact this transition would have. 
Finally, the series will take a thorough look at the proposed Orsted project off the coast of Atlantic City. These articles will scrutinize construction logistics and costs, local jobs that could be created during construction, where the turbines will be manufactured and what they will cost, the specifics of where and how the turbines would connect to the grid, what permits would be required for their installation and other factors specific to this project.
Coverage will reflect the county’s reaction to the project, including investigating the potential impact on local fisheries, how it’s installation and operation would disrupt wildlife, potential impacts on tourism, and the formation of opposition groups, and their claims of the “visual pollution” it will create. It will look at New Jersey’s geographical position, and how its proximity to a vast natural resource, the Atlantic Ocean, makes it different in relation to other states. 
It’s not the Herald’s plan to take any position through this series, only transparently present the most complete and factual findings. Feedback and community input is desired, and it is the hope to incorporate it and consider it throughout the series. 
“Understanding Our Changing Climate” is an ongoing collaboration between Correspondent Shay Roddy and Publisher Art Hall, focused on providing our county with an in-depth explanation about the local and global implications of climate change and mankind’s efforts to mitigate it.