Empower NJ Marches for a Moratorium on Fossil Fuel in Bordentown to Trenton

On the final day for public comments on NJ’s Energy Master Plan, the Empower NJ Coalition along with advocates supporting a cleaner and greener future are walking for a moratorium on fossil fuels. The march will begin with a rally in Bordentown at the site of the compressor station and end with a final rally at the NJ Statehouse. Marchers will voice and chant that NJ’s EMP lacks the urgency needed to adhere to scientists’ call for a 45% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. More importantly, it fails to mention the 15 proposed fossil fuel projects in New Jersey like the SRL pipeline that has already started construction despite being in ongoing litigation. New Jersey needs immediate action to avoid climate catastrophe and that is why advocates will march for a moratorium on fossil fuels.

“We have a voice and we will be heard! Actually, I have hope that we’re already being heard. The recent 3rd Circuit ruling, stopping the PennEast from taking public lands through eminent domain gives me hope. The people who showed up at the Kroc Center in Camden give me hope, including former President of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, Jeanne Fox, who called for a Moratorium on all new fossil fuel projects. Now that gives me hope! And all of you here today give me hope! We can stop and even begin to reverse the effects of fossil fuels in our state,” said Agnes Marsala, People Over Pipelines.

“People are marching and moving because we need to get the governor to move. The DEP has failed to add climate change and natural gas infrastructure in the Energy Master Plan. Unless they add those critical issues, the EMP is EMP-T-Y. The Energy Master Plan needs to have more language opposing fossil fuel plants, pipelines, and calling for a moratorium, otherwise all of the rhetoric from the Governor and others is just more hot air. We demand climate action now and an EMP that will get New Jersey to 100% renewable energy by 2035 and zero carbon by 2050,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.

“The Energy Master Plan fails to deliver concrete steps to address the climate crisis. In addition to an immediate moratorium on fossil fuel projects, NJ needs a green jobs program including just transition provisions from dangerous fossil fuel jobs. Far more jobs can be created in renewable energy and energy efficiency and they are safer, cleaner, and healthier for workers and their families.  First and foremost, we want a future for our grandchildren,” Carol Gay, President, NJ State Industrial Union Council.

“Saying the right things about the climate crisis is not enough – New Jersey needs real action from Governor Murphy. True climate leadership means calling for a full moratorium on all new fossil fuel projects. We are in an emergency, and we must act accordingly in order to get off fossil fuels,” said Jocelyn Sawyer, Food & Water Watch.

Residents living near the Southern Reliability Link are extremely concerned about the welfare and safety of living in their own homes, some like a local mother, Nicole Bencivengo, said that she does not want to live in her own house.

“On the final day for public comments on New Jersey’s draft Energy Master Plan, we will march for clean and renewable energy that will drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions and halt fossil fuel projects – projects that march New Jersey in the wrong direction. Dirty fracked gas is being brought here through pipelines like the Southern Reliability Link so our march will start there and signify what we oppose and end in Trenton to tell Gov. Murphy and the BPU to adopt a bold and action-packed Energy Master Plan. We need to turn our state from being a polluter to being an economy based on carbon-free energy and clean, healthy communities. We’re marching for a bold, transformative energy plan led by what people want now and for our future generations,” said Tracy Carluccio, Deputy Director, Delaware Riverkeeper Network.

“People traveled from all corners of the state. Some took the day off of work or skipped class to take action. We marched 10 miles and we sounded the alarm at the BPU, DEP, and Statehouse. But the real radical action today is the State’s deafening silence on protecting us from the 15 proposed fossil fuel projects in NJ and their potential climate impacts,” said Eric Benson, Campaign Director fo Clean Water Action. “We need a moratorium on all new fossil fuel projects now!”

“The science is undeniable; we have ten years to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to avoid climate catastrophe. We can’t possibly do that if we add more fossil fuel plants and pipelines.  Yet when asked about a moratorium the Governor first stated it would be addressed in the EMP. It wasn’t. Now the Governor is apparently claiming he doesn’t have the legal authority to combat immediately the existential climate crisis we now face.  The Governor is wrong; he has that authority constitutionally and statutorily. Prior Governors of both parties have ordered moratoriums in far less emergent situations,” said John Reichman, Blue Wave NJ. “The Governor needs both to be straight with us and to order a moratorium on new fossil fuel projects until the State has in place a real plan to reduce greenhouse gases.”

 “The draft Energy Master Plan (which technically isn’t even a plan) has become an excuse for Governor Murphy to take no action on any new fossil fuel project that will jeopardize our health and safety as well the climate of NJ and the world.  In Orwellian fashion, he refers demands for a moratorium to stop harmful projects to the EMP, while he prevented the EMP from providing any guidance on a moratorium on those projects,” said Ken Dolksy, Don’t Gas the Meadowlands.

“Today’s march is another sign of the massive grassroots opposition to proposed new fossil fuel projects around New Jersey. These proposals, mainly gas pipelines and power plants, represent a vision of an energy future that ignores climate science, endangers public health and ravages public lands. The Energy Master Plan remains devoid of acknowledging this climate elephant in the room,” said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey. “Climate activists from around the state at every Energy Master Plan hearing have called for both a moratorium and  carbon reductions by 2030 in line with the IPCC report. Today’s march is a reminder that gas companies are already building the SRL pipeline, and we need an immediate stay on further construction. We can’t keep digging the climate hole deeper and we need an Energy Master Plan that reckons its clean energy goals with the climate science.”

Empower NJ is a coalition of over 90 environmental, citizen, faith, and progressive groups leading a grassroots campaign calling on Governor Murphy to act quickly on climate change by stopping all pending fossil fuel expansion projects.