The NJ Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), has published its "Draft Global Warming Response Act (GWRA) Recommendation Report." The report is a series of recommendations for how the DEP thinks the state can achieve its Global Warming Response Act of 2007.

The new Recommendation Report alone doesn't overcome the major criticism of NJ's approach to global warming -- that it lacks teeth. For instance, one New Jersey environmental leader I spoke with this week said, "New Jersey needs to implement the policies it has announced. We have great policy thinkers, but the implementation tools aren't there yet. So the whole system is breaking down."

Therefore, during the public commenting period for the draft Recommendation Report, I believe the major area to focus on should be to fully fund an "GWRA Implementation Team" (with joint Gubernatorial and Legislative representatives) whose sole function is to push the report's recommendations into actual laws and regulatory action.

This team should be different from the participants who drafted the report, and different from the "independent research review panel" that the report calls for; rather, The Implementation Team I'm calling for should be dominated by people who have created and implemented laws in NJ -- folks with executive-branch and legislative experience who have worked in scientific areas. It would include members of the Governor's administration, committee staffers, lobbyists, and others. The Implementation Team could be structured functionally so that each sub-group is responsible for seeing through each major area highlighted in the Recommendation Report: Legislative Actions, Regulatory Actions, Implementation Actions for instance.

The Implementation Team should be charged with publishing a monthly update on its activities and progress, and it should present the report in monthly meetings with the Governor and Legislature, and with the media.

The DEP has published a list of six stakeholder meetings between Jan 6 and Jan 16. The trouble is, they're organized by subject matter (Green Buildings, Transporation, etc), so that any public comments calling for an Implementation Team will have to be highlighted at each meeting.

Related Articles - Most Recent (And see "Labels" at right for more).