Empower NJ: No Fossil Fuel Projects

offshore wind turbines / photo: istock.com

Clean Water Action has joined a coalition of groups to launch Empower NJ: No Fossil Fuel Projects, a new campaign for a moratorium on fossil fuel projects and a rapid and fair transition to a 100% clean renewable energy economy.

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Climate change is an immediate and grave threat to the 9 million people who call New Jersey home. The combination of rising sea levels, increasingly destructive storms, severe and more frequent flooding events, and other devastating climate impacts represent nothing short of an emergency. According to a 2018 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we may have as little as 12 years to reach critical levels in stopping greenhouse gas emissions before we cross irreversible climate tipping points.

After Trump pulled the US out of the historic Paris Climate Agreement, Governor Murphy signed New Jersey onto the US Climate Alliance, a pledge to uphold the goals from Paris to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and no higher than 2 degrees. We commend the Governor for this pledge, but we simply cannot achieve this critical goal if his administration continues approving new, long term fossil fuel infrastructure projects. Simply put, if the Governor doesn't take immediate action to fight climate change by stopping new sources of green house gas pollution in NJ, and by implementing a real plan to rapidly reduce existing green house gases, then he will be putting thousands of lives and billions of dollars in economic damage at risk.

Empower NJ was launched to call on the Governor to enact a moratorium on all new fossil fuel development in NJ, including the 12 power plants and pipeline projects currently proposed in NJ, as well as complete complete ban on fracking, water withdrawals for fracking, and fracking wastewater in the Delaware River Basin and New Jersey. The current Delaware River Watershed fracking moratorium is under attack by big oil and gas and the Trump administration, and we cannot allow this toxic, climate disrupting industry to gain a foothold in the watershed for over 10 Million people throughout the region.

Governor Murphy has all the evidence and regulatory tools he needs to enact an emergency moratorium on new fossil fuel development, at least until New Jersey has a real plan to immediately reduce green house gas emissions and transition to 100% clean renewable energy.

NJ_EmpowerNJ_Campaign Launch_Trenton_Coalition_Photo By David Pringle

Empower NJ Coalition Members

Dozens of groups ranging from leading environmental non-profits to community action groups to faith and progressive groups have formed a campaign called Empower NJ-Stop Fossil Fuels: