Christie withdraws N.J. from regional cap-and-trade program

TRENTON - Gov. Christie said Thursday that New Jersey would withdraw from the nation's first regional cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gases - an announcement that left environmentalists fuming and political observers speculating over the whether the governor was appealing to the national conservative base.

The governor acknowledged there was "undeniable data" that levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were increasing and affecting the climate.

"When you have over 90 percent of the world's scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role, it's time to defer to the experts. . . . We know enough to know that we are at least a part of the problem," he said.

But he rejected the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative - an agreement among New Jersey and nine other Northeast states - as an effective solution.

The program aims to reduce carbon emissions, which are linked to global warming, by 10 percent in participating states by 2018. Under a system known as cap-and-trade, fossil-fuel-burning power plants essentially pay a price for polluting by buying allowances for the carbon they emit. The proceeds are invested in renewable energy and energy efficiency.

The price of allowances per ton has fallen from $3.07 at the first auction three years ago to $1.89 at the last event in March. Christie said the allowances "were never expensive enough to change behavior as they were intended to and ultimately fuel different choices."

"The whole system is not working as it was intended to work," he said. "It's a failure."

A number of the state's environmentalists disagreed.

Christie should be working with other states to strengthen the program instead of giving up, said Matt Elliott, a global-warming and clean-energy advocate for Environment New Jersey.

"It was always understood that the states agreed, 'Let's try this for a couple years; let's get it working, and we'll review it and make it stronger.' . . . Christie is just throwing up his hands and quitting, which is entirely the wrong approach," Elliott said.

Some political observers viewed the GOP governor's move as an effort to appeal to a national conservative agenda, similar to his controversial fiscal decisions to halt a commuter tunnel to New York and eliminate state funding for family planning centers.