Thank you for contacting the campaign, Mr. Allen. Please rest assured that Governor Corzine cares as deeply about the environment as you do, and that his record on environmental stewardship and taking progressive action to address climate change puts him well beyond the other candidates in this area. Governor Corzine has a clear vision recognizing that environmental protection and economic development are mutually related goals achieved through strong leadership, sound science and common-sense policies. Protecting New Jersey’s environment has always been – and continues to be – a top priority for him. Protecting our natural resources, controlling and regulating our emissions, and using clean and renewable energy sources are all vital to our sustainability.

Recognizing the challenges we face and the opportunity they represent, he launched New Jersey’s first Energy Master Plan (EMP) since 1991. The EMP provides a roadmap to guide the State toward a responsible energy future with adequate, reliable energy supplies that are both environmentally responsible and competitively priced.

The major challenges to our energy future are increased costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and an increase in the demand for electricity. The EMP requires an overall reduction in energy use by 20% and a reduction in peak demand for electricity by 5,700 MW by 2020. Incentivizing cogeneration and the use of smart grid technologies will help New Jersey reach these important goals.

Under the EMP, we will ensure that 30% of the State’s energy use comes from renewable sources by 2020. We’re reaching that goal by becoming a national leader in solar and offshore wind energy. We have instituted new goals and programs to support the development of nearly 2,000 MW of solar energy and 3,000 MW of offshore wind energy by 2020, making us more energy independent and environmentally responsible.

Today, New Jersey has the second most solar panels installed in the U.S and the most solar panels per square mile in the country. And, we are poised to become the first offshore wind producer in the nation.

While addressing these challenges, the EMP will stimulate a nearly $33 billion investment into the State’s energy infrastructure, create more than 20,000 new green collar jobs, save consumers nearly $30 billion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the electricity and heating fuel sectors to 23% below 1990 levels.

This 21st century energy plan will require us to invest in a workforce with 21st century skills, and we will grow our clean energy industry through the development of green collar job training programs and support for public and private research efforts.

Governor Corzine has also championed legislation providing schools, municipalities and counties with the necessary contracting tools to make energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements, and signed legislation providing rebates to new cogeneration projects in New Jersey. He has also budgeted $1.2 billion over the next four years to the Clean Energy Program to support energy efficiency and renewable energy in New Jersey. Additionally, under his leadership, New Jersey is also leveraging approximately $267 million in federal funds from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act to further our energy agenda, including efficiency improvements for low-income households and renewable energy projects for businesses and homeowners.

Understanding that we all share a responsibility to protect our world, Governor Corzine has been working to make New Jersey a national leader in reducing emissions. Making us only the 3rd state to make greenhouse gas reduction goals law, he enacted the Global Warming Response Act, requiring a reduction in carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and to 80% below the 2006 level by 2050.

We’ve also taken a leadership role in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the first mandatory market-based “cap & trade” program in the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions, serving as a model for what we could achieve nationwide.

While working on all of these forward-looking measures, Governor Corzine hasn’t lost sight of our shared conservation goals. Since taking office, he has worked to acquire and protect sensitive open spaces, and he has upgraded nearly 700 miles of waterways and 1,300 acres of reservoirs to the State’s highest level of water-quality protection (C1). He’s also protected sensitive areas like the Highlands, which provide drinking water to most New Jerseyans.

To ensure that all of these initiatives move efficiently and that we can ensure that we’re growing in a responsible way, he modernized and streamlined the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). He created a new Office of Planning and Sustainable Communities to coordinate efficient and sustainable development with green planning policies.

He also created the Permit Efficiency Task Force to conduct a comprehensive analysis of DEP permitting. The DEP is currently implementing its numerous recommendations, including a new electronic permitting service. Under Governor Corzine, DEP has also placed a greater emphasis on stakeholder input in its policymaking, leading to greater predictability in permitting. These measures result in savings in time and money for businesses, and we’ve taken steps to make these reforms permanent.

Our current and new green policies are helping stimulate our economy in conjunction with our other efforts to reduce the impact of the recession. While there’s still work to do, the sound policies Governor Corzine has implemented have made New Jersey a national leader in green economic development. We have the resources, know-how, and drive to push New Jersey forward, and he is committed to keep ensuring that our Garden State keeps advancing economically while embracing policies that protect the world in which we all live. Thanks again for contacting the campaign, Mr. Allen, and we hope that this helps to address your concerns.

Team Corzine

My Message follows.
I am a life-long Democrat and have been planning to vote for Jon Corzine. I also planned to put his signs out in my township, where there are almost none now.

I received a message from NJEF this morning that greatly troubles me. It says that they are supporting Chris Christie and states the reaons.

Slowing climate change and protecting the environment are my first priorities, and I am very disturbed by what I read in the NJEF message. The Corzine campaign needs to respond to this message quickly and show that Jon Corzine also places high priority on these things. If not, he will risk losing my vote and those of many others.

Bill Allen (908-766-2876) 10-09-09

Should the administration move first on health care, or on the environment, or on housing, or on the economy? Clearly the answer is that it has to do all of these. The question most often asked in the media, though, is how to pay for it.

In some ways this is a strange question, because it is the government that issues the means to pay for things in the first place. But we maintain the polite fiction that it is run like a household, and really ought to balance its budget (except when it shouldn’t). Underneath this is the fear that government will continue to issue money until it causes inflation, and we’ll all be pushing around wheelbarrows of worthless dollars.

Of course this is nonsense.

If the money that the government prints it uses to invest in infrastructure, in science, in health care, and in addressing the challenges of climate change, it strengthens rather than weakens society and the economy. Spending more money means creating new jobs, putting America back to work (and most importantly back to productive work that does not harm but rather restores the global ecosystem), unleashing creativity, and engaging passion. In this context, balancing the federal budget becomes again an interesting challenge, a long-term goal, based on growing the economy. This economic growth must however be based on the principles of sustainability; we need to make a shift from an extractive economy to a renewable, self-sustaining one. The issue is not whether or not to spend money; the issue is where to spend it, to get the most sustainable growth per dollar invested. And we need to think in terms of the long-term return on investment as well, to see this investment as being on behalf of all future generations as well as our own.

This also implies, to some degree, a new approach to economics. It is more than life-cycle costing, valuing environmental services, and incorporating such externalities as greenhouse gas emissions, though it includes all of these. It must be rethought based on the presupposition that the the goal of the economy is to accelerate fairly-distributed abundance, and not simply to increase the already highly concentrated wealth that exists today. And even the wealthy will gladly pay for a return to economic growth and prosperity.

The role of government, then, is help organize people productively and profitably to produce that which is in the society’s long-term best interest. By assisting and supporting the development of sustainable communities, businesses, and families, government fulfills a role that can be embraced by liberals and conservatives alike, that puts the economy at the service of its citizens and inspires them to create more wealth, by creating more value, more innovation, and more self-sufficiency.

(First posted at http://jonathancloud.com/?p=56, November 13, 2008.)

The number of Democrats in Bernards Township doubled this year, as voters turned out in droves to vote in the February presidential primary. Turnout for the June 3 primary was of course much lower, but just as significant: we wrote in two candidates for Bernards Township Committee, Bill Allen and Bill Kimzey, and elected nearly 40 district representatives – who in turn helped put in place a new county organization to help us win in this year’s critical elections. Peg Schaffer and Zenon Christodoulou are the new chair and vice-chair respectively, and they are bringing together party representatives across all of Somerset County’s 21 towns.

• For the latest updates on the local campaign, go to KimzeyAllen2008.org.
• To view a calendar of local Democratic events, go here.
• To see the latest news, and post your comments, go here
• To join the Bernards Township Young Voters site, go here.

Stay tuned for more updates and links to more sites and tools. If you’d like to get involved, please email us at jcloud@bernardsdemocrats.org to be added to our mailing list.