Welcome to Environment New Jersey, the new home of NJPIRG’s environmental work. With your support, we are continuing to use the same creative, results-oriented approach to our state’s environmental problems that has made such an important difference over the years. With a clear name and a sharper focus, we expect to make an even bigger impact on the environmental issues that you and I care about.

Meanwhile, our friends at NJPIRG continue to offer a strong and independent voice for the public on major issues such as health care reform, identity theft, government waste and more.

In September, we launched Environment New Jersey with the release of our new report, “A Blueprint for Action: Policy Options to Reduce New Jersey’s Contribution to Global Warming.” Many of the policy recommendations in that report form a large portion of our 2007 policy agenda, which you can read in full on pages four and five of this report. Our policy agenda includes a variety of environmental protections we believe we can and must see through to adoption this year.

In addition to working for solutions to global warming, our agenda also contains important efforts to protect the state’s water resources, to preserve our dwindling open space, and to build a new energy future.

• At the top of our list to protect waterways, we’re working to convince Gov. Corzine to limit the expansion of development in environmentally sensitive areas, a leading cause of water pollution in our state.

• To foster a new energy future, we are working on a whole host of policies to reduce energy use in the state and promote renewable energy.

• To preserve open space, we’re working with New Jersey’s leading environmental and outdoor recreation groups to ensure the state’s Garden State Preservation Trust fund is strengthened and renewed this year.

• At the top of our global warming priorities is ground-breaking legislation that would reduce the state’s contribution to global warming significantly, from all sources. A similar bill has already been passed and adopted in California. As more states consider the policy and move to adopt it, we create the possibility that strong, urgently needed federal action is also around the corner.

To read more on these and other Environment New Jersey priorities, go to pages four and five. Our goal is to report progress, if not victory, on these priorities by the year’s end.

Your generous support funds this work. Your e-mails, calls and letters make it more powerful and effective. Together, we bring a strong voice to the debate about energy and the environment in New Jersey. Thank you for helping to make all our voices heard.

Sincerely,

Dena Mottola
Executive Director