The toxic cloud is upon us

This article originally appeared in Insider NJ. “I think it would be common sense that when the National Weather Service and the NJDEP have both issued a code red air quality day with the weather service saying air quality is worse today, our state workforce should be kept insider as much as possible,” texted Fran Ehret, New Jersey state director of the CWA, which represents 40,000 state workers many of whom work outdoors. “The Inland Flood Protection Rule will serve as a critical component of my Administration’s comprehensive strategy to bolster our state’s resilience amid the worsening impacts of climate change,” Murphy said in his statement yesterday. This rule’s formation and upcoming adoption testify to our commitment to rely on the most up-to-date science and robust stakeholder engagement to inform our most crucial policy decisions.” The Governor got the rhetoric right way back in his January 2020 Executive Order 100 citing a 2019 report “New Jersey’s Rising Seas and Changing Coastal Storms” that showed “that sea-level rise projections in New Jersey are more than two times the global average and that the sea level in New Jersey could rise from 2000 levels by up to 1.1 feet by 2030, 2.1 feet by 2050, and 6.3 feet by 2100, underscoring the urgent need for action to protect the State from adverse climate change impacts.” In the late summer of 2021, Hurricane Ida took 90 lives in total when it inundated a nine-state swath of the Northeast. “New Jersey is experiencing increased effects of climate change — this is a climate crisis and what we are seeing and will continue to see are periods of dryness that lead to drought and wildfires and then followed by periods of big rain events that lead to flooding — so we are going to have too much water excerpt when we don’t have enough of it,” said Jennifer Coffey, executive director of the Association of New Jersey’s Environmental Commissions.