Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Wednesday signed a bill joining a coalition of states committed to cutting emissions of carbon dioxide to fulfill the United States’ pledge under the Paris international climate change agreement.
Murphy’s action requires New Jersey to join the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 15 other states and Puerto Rico vowing to uphold the Paris Agreement. Both chambers of the state legislature passed a bill to put New Jersey in the alliance.
President Trump has announced his intent to remove the U.S. from the deal.
“It’s important that Governor Murphy has signed this bill and committed New Jersey to uphold the Paris Climate Accord,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “By joining 16 other states as part of this Climate Alliance, we are not only working together to protecting ourselves against climate change but sending a message to the Trump administration. We can move forward together with other programs to reduce greenhouse gases.”
The alliance, which includes California — the sixth largest economy in the world — represents at least $7 trillion of economic activity and about 40 percent of the nation’s population.
The Paris Agreement permits countries to set their own targets for reducing carbon emissions, which most climate scientists blame for driving manmade climate change. Under the Paris deal, Trump argued the U.S. committed too much compared with other countries such as Canada and India.
The U.S. plan, which the Obama administration submitted in 2015, set the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025.
Global emissions of carbon dioxide are rising after several years of remaining flat, the Washington Post reported this week, with the U.S. and other countries struggling to fulfill their climate pledges. The agreement is not legally binding.
U.S. emissions are expected to rise 1.8 percent in 2018 after three years of declines, the Energy Information Administration says.
The U.S. cannot formally exit from the Paris Agreement until the 2020 presidential election year under the United Nations’ rules for withdrawal.
In the meantime, the Trump administration is working to repeal the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which is intended to reduce power plant emissions and is the main U.S. pledge as part of the Paris Agreement.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday in Kansas City, Mo., hosted its second session of public hearings on its move to repeal the plan.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is expected to propose a modest version of the Clean Power Plan after repealing it.
