By Tony Hagen • editor@newjersey.sierraclub.org
US Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf once got together with some schoolmates and recalled how “duty, honor, country” had been drilled into their heads at West Point. “I believed that stuff,” said one of them, and they all agreed.
Throughout their Army careers they encountered much cynicism, careerism, and incompetence, but according to Schwarzkopf they lived their ideals, and we can be grateful for people who still do, as it’s the stuff that holds our country together and prepares it to meet adversity.
Lately, there has been a blizzard of the wrong stuff coming down the pipe from Washington, and it doesn’t take much to read the writing on the wall. Things are likely to get awfully bad, and that’s already the case for offshore wind.
President Trump is using his executive authority to make things very difficult for the wind turbine industry, and recently in New Jersey, we have seen our latest, best hope for wind turbines (Atlantic Shores) founder very badly. Oil, gas, and coal are not really a good substitute for wind energy. They produce far more emissions that drive up global temperatures.
Trump is leading us in the direction of a “high emissions scenario,” which Rutgers warned about in a science-based report a few years ago. Under modest emissions, we could expect up to 1 feet of sea level rise by end of century. Under a high emissions scenario, according to Rutgers, we could have as much as an 8.8-foot sea level rise.
If I were a resident of the Jersey Shore, I would be quietly selling my house at this point and moving to higher ground. I would not be worried so much about the tiny specks on the horizon that wind turbines might have been.
The Environmental Protection Agency has similarly warned about temperature rise. Under a modest emissions scenario, a 3° F rise by end of century was forecast, but that temperature increase would be as much as 12° F under the high emissions scenario. Just imagine the hottest day last summer and add 12° F to that.
Memo to Shore residents: Move to higher ground much farther north.
Progress on the environmental front can be measured in inches and centimeters, too, and over the next four years that’s how we may have to do it.
It’s my opinion that congestion pricing as implemented in New York City is a good thing for encouraging people to use mass transit and clearing up traffic jams that pollute our atmosphere and drive up temperatures. I don’t understand Gov. Phil Murphy’s objections very clearly or his reasons for asking Trump to intervene—though I have tried.
In throwing out the babies, Trump and Elon Musk actually may have thrown out some bathwater as well. The unpopular Hydrogen Hub program as of this writing has ground to a halt because it was funded under the Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump is attempting to demolish.
There was no way to effectively manage the greenhouse gas risk from the hydrogen industries that former President Biden wanted to establish, and no amount of propaganda from Washington and the fossil fuel industry could convince us otherwise. In the environmental community, we will not miss hydrogen if it does not come back.
Environmentally speaking, there has been too much to unpack in the portmanteau that Trump has brought to Washington this time around. We are all reeling with shock and disbelief.
Schwarzkopf, in his autobiography, said that each time he was given a new command he came hoping and expecting to be put in charge of a crack regiment or battalion or division, and instead found himself with a host of problems that needed shaping up. That’s what a job is truly all about.
Schwarzkopf didn’t go about his duties with the enthusiasm of the girl who hunts for a pony in the pile of manure on Christmas morning, but go about it he did. We are so fortunate to have had people like him looking after us during the halcyon days, and now it’s our job.