In an October 4 Star-Ledger opinion piece, Tony Hagen, Editor of The Jersey Sierran, says it’s time to apply what we know about environmental science to our development decisions, especially when it comes to dropping another warehouse in New Jersey.
In the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” a community of apes wakes up one morning to find a giant monolith has planted itself in their midst. It induces them to start clobbering their neighbors with bones, and evolutionary history changes. Year after year, New Jersey towns are waking up to something similar: gigantic warehouses in their midst.
Like Kubrick’s monolith, these warehouses empower but also corrupt. They bring tremendous tax revenues to small and large towns, but they also flood streets and highways with truck traffic, fill the air with ozone and particulate matter, consume vast amounts of fossil fuel-based energy, and create light and noise pollution. Their construction alone involves vast amounts of concrete, whose manufacture and transport are one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas.
Warehouses offer short-sighted solutions that can seem more appealing than they are worth. Read the full piece at NJ.com.