As if his callous disregard for his oath to abide by the US and NJ constitutions were not enough, NJ governor Phil Murphy is pushing hard not only to breach those so-called “rule books” even more, he is (just as he was with his lockdown and mask edicts) striving to make people’s lives harder and increase their costs of living with a new, utopian-globalist "clean energy plan."
Since August, he and many of his leftist accomplices have been hammering the core of his idea: the top-down nail of a natural gas ban into the coffin of the New Jersey economy.
It’s called the “Energy Master Plan,” and, as with many “master plans” in various leftist political enclaves, it’s the plaything of Murphy’s collectivist intelligentsia and those who would make oodles off government policy favoring them.
NJ Senate Minority Leader Steve Oroho (R) (who just defeated a Dem order that Senators be jabbed or show negative “tests” to enter the chamber) recently pushed back hard against the Murphy plan, which would mandate (among other authoritarian diktats) near zero use of natural gas in the state by 2050.
Oroho penned a December 15 opinion piece for the Burlington County Times lambasting Murphy’s pot-shot at the energy source and at those who might want to use it:
Cost estimates peg the plan’s financial impact at $52,500 per resident or $210,000 for an average family of four. New Jersey is dubiously known for its high cost of living and excessive taxes so residents can ill afford an additional financial burden of such magnitude.
Oroho also said, “The huge cost effect is real and will happen if residents don’t speak up.”
And he wrote:
Frankly, the governor’s plan is no plan at all. It is an environmental manifest, a demand on every individual, family, and employer in the state. The mandated message is clear: ‘You must do …, you will do …, you have no say in the matter.’
And Senator Oroho observed:
Affordable Energy for New Jersey, a coalition of some of the most influential labor and business groups in the state, estimates taxpayers will be on the hook for $525 billion in new costs. Even in a state known for some of the highest taxes in the nation, the total is stunning. No wonder the governor and his administration lack the openness to discuss the plan’s costs.
And, like his disregard for the Constitution, which he admitted on a live 2020 appearance with Tucker Carlson, Murphy also seems blissfully dismissive – or ignorant – of the fact that his vaunted desire to compel other people to join his “electric utopia.”
GOP State Senator Anthony Bucco sounded the alarm about this Murphy elitism in August, noting, in part:
Governor Murphy’s new Energy Master Plan acknowledges that 75% of existing residences in the state are heated with natural gas… That so many New Jersey families currently depend on natural gas is not a coincidence. It’s affordable, reliable for heating and cooking, and dependable for emergency standby power generation when electric lines are knocked out during storms like Sandy.
And as Paul Mulshine noted for NJ.com and The Star-Ledger, the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) already has exposed the reality that the very “electric power” on which Murphy wants people to rely as an alternative to natural gas comes, mostly, from… the burning of natural gas.
The EIA also tells us that natural gas is the state’s primary source of energy for generating electricity and that renewables provide just 5 percent.
And Mulshine adds:
It further tells us that ‘In 2018, three out of four New Jersey households used natural gas as their primary home heating fuel.’
This kind of political foolishness is reminiscent of hand-wringer leftists who drive electric vehicles and believe that electricity is a “source” of power, when the source -- the actual creation of the electro-magnetic energy -- typically comes via the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.
So, given that the Bill of Rights and Constitution are, as Murphy has said, “above’ his pay grade (despite those being the core of his oath of office), and given his utter ignorance and stunning self-deception when it comes to energy, is it any wonder that he has no problem mandating how other people live and get their energy?
Regardless of the ever-expanding net of controversy catching more and more politicians and politically tied “scientists” in their hypocrisy and their less-than-believable climate claims, Murphy’s “pathway” towards what he depicts as a climate nirvana is more of the same from him: authoritarianism. It will allow central government figures to control more of people's lives, because it will prevent individual owners from contracting for any energy or heat supply from any entity other than the government or from what a government-cozy corporation offers through central lines.
New York City has already fallen to this insanity for new buildings under seven-floors, by 2024.
As residents nearby, the folks in New Jersey might want avoid the error of the Big Apple, and let Mr. Murphy know how ugly his mindset is.