Affordability doesn’t mean sliding down the slippery slope of rolling back environmental protections

Why Democrats shouldn’t borrow from Republicans on energy and the environment

At a time when there is an all-out war on the environment at the national level, New Jersey should be a bastion of resistance. Instead, we are seeing troubling warning signs—through language, executive orders, and governing tools—that risk normalizing dangerous practices environmental advocates have fought for decades.

What worries me most is the growing reliance on so-called “energy emergencies,” fast-tracked permitting, regulatory pauses, red-tape reviews, waivers, and executive shortcuts—whether they come from Republicans in Washington or Democrats in Trenton.

Let me be clear from the start: Mikie Sherrill is not Donald Trump. She is not anti-science. She is not hostile to environmental protection. She talks about climate change, clean energy, and affordability—and that matters. The governor deserves the benefit of the doubt until we see how these policies are implemented.

But while Governor Sherrill is fighting Trump on many fronts, she is also signing executive orders that have a distinctly Republican ring to them. Good intentions do not cancel out bad precedents or dangerous procedures. And intent alone does not protect the environment or public health.

Affordability is increasingly being used as the excuse to weaken environmental protections. In New Jersey, we don’t need to speculate about where that leads. On his first day in office, Chris Christie signed executive orders freezing rules, launching red-tape reviews, and expanding waivers—exactly the same governing playbook now reappearing. We lived it before—and we fought back.

We lived it under Christie.

We saw it taken to the extreme under Trump.

That history is why people should be alarmed when the same language and governing tools resurface—even when deployed by a Democratic governor with very different goals. Environmental damage rarely happens in one dramatic rollback. It happens quietly, incrementally, permit by permit—a death by a thousand cuts.

The rise of the “energy emergency”

Trump declared a national energy emergency to justify sweeping executive authority—fast-tracking fossil fuel projects, weakening environmental review, and sidelining public input in the name of speed and supply. It was a blunt instrument, and a dangerous one.

Now New Jersey has declared its own emergency around electricity affordability, using similar crisis framing: urgent action, decisive leadership, processes that supposedly take too long, and permitting delays blamed for rising costs.

Different scale. Different intent. Same governing logic.

Once you declare an emergency, you are no longer debating policy—you are suspending normal rules. History shows that when environmental safeguards collide with emergency powers, the environment loses. Waiving pollution standards and compressing public participation almost always leads to abuse, more pollution, and irreversible harm.

“Permitting reform” is not reform

After decades of fighting environmental rollbacks, I can say this with certainty: nearly every rollback begins with the phrase “streamlining permitting.”

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) already approves roughly 97 percent of permit applications.

Governor Sherrill’s executive orders do not say “weaken environmental laws.” Neither did Trump’s or Christie’s. Instead, they focus on:

• “getting to yes” by speeding approvals
• reducing delays
• identifying regulatory “barriers”
• imposing timelines and shot clocks

On paper, this sounds reasonable. In practice, it usually means:

• less time for environmental review
• fewer opportunities for public participation
• increased pressure on agencies to approve damaging projects
• decisions driven by politics rather than science

Privatizing DEP functions—by having consultants review and issue permits—is part of this same strategy. These firms often work for the very polluters and developers seeking approvals. When the governor says her new DEP commissioner will “cut through red tape and reduce permitting times,” the message is clear.

It takes far more time and effort to say no to bad projects than to say yes. Environmental protections don’t usually get repealed in the legislature—they get repealed through rushed analyses, compressed timelines, privatization, waivers, and approvals issued before communities even understand what’s being proposed.

Gas is the tell

If you want to know whether an energy policy is serious about climate, look at how it treats natural gas.

For 30 years, we’ve been told gas is a “bridge fuel.” That bridge never ends. Every expansion justifies the next one. Every so-called temporary investment locks in decades of infrastructure.

Fast-tracking gas plant upgrades or expansions—even under the banner of efficiency—locks in fossil fuel dependence at the exact moment climate science tells us we must move faster in the opposite direction. These facilities are overwhelmingly located in already overburdened environmental justice communities, increasing pollution and public-health impacts.

Energy deregulation only worsens the problem. New Jersey allows gas power plants to sell electricity out of state—four exclusively to New York and others partially—while New Jersey residents bear the pollution, health, and infrastructure costs.

Trump embraces gas openly. Some Democrats embrace it quietly, calling it transitional or necessary for reliability. The result is the same: more pollution and higher long-term costs.

Taking on Trump—but not on the environment

Governor Sherrill has taken on Trump on immigration, ICE, education, and the Gateway Tunnel. But she has not yet taken him on when it comes to his war against the environment.

Is Trump being used as political cover to weaken environmental regulations at home—or will New Jersey step up and fight back?

That fight requires an aggressive legal strategy against federal rollbacks and state legislation to restore and strengthen environmental protections. Other states have acted. New Jersey can too—by restoring Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act standards into state law and adopting stronger greenhouse gas limits under our own authority.

Executive orders and old mistakes

This should be an exciting moment for New Jersey. A new governor has taken office, and many hope fresh leadership will bring fresh thinking. I want this administration to succeed. But hope does not replace accountability.

Within days of taking office, Executive Orders 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 together set a troubling direction. Individually, they are framed as common-sense reform or consumer relief. Taken together, they risk undermining decades of environmental protection, weakening public oversight, and masking deeper structural failures.

Executive Order No. 1: Rate relief by raiding climate funds

Executive Order No. 1 directs the Board of Public Utilities to provide electric bill credits, pause rate hikes, and divert funds from the Clean Energy Program, RGGI, and Solar Alternative Compliance Payments to pay for short-term relief.

Helping families struggling with high bills is essential. Utilities have raised rates while posting record profits. Accountability is long overdue.

But draining climate and clean-energy funds for temporary relief is the wrong solution. Those funds exist to reduce emissions, weatherize homes, lower demand, and deliver long-term savings. Using them this way is like selling the roof to pay the heating bill.

That isn’t affordability. It’s a shell game—and one that hurts consumers, jobs, and the environment.

Executive Order No. 7: The regulatory pause

Executive Order No. 7 imposes a 90-day freeze on new regulations and withdraws pending rules not yet published in the New Jersey Register—all in the name of cutting red tape.

We’ve seen this before. Christie’s red-tape review weakened flood hazard rules, clean-water protections, and toxic-site cleanup standards. Permits did not move faster. Pollution increased.

Climate change does not pause for 90 days. Flooding does not wait. Air and water pollution do not take a break.

Critical rules—such as PFAS cleanup standards and real flood-protection rules—are now on hold. While a public-health waiver supposedly exists, none have been granted. Instead, waiver authority has been shifted to a COO-style “permitting czar,” sidelining DEP expertise.

This is the worst possible time to hit pause.

Executive Order No. 5: Streamlined permitting or rubber-stamping?

Executive Order No. 5 creates cross-agency permitting teams, imposes shot clocks, and pressures agencies—especially the DEP—to approve projects quickly.

We tried fast-tracking before. It was so flawed that the Environmental Protection Agency under George W. Bush ruled New Jersey violated the federal Clean Water Act.

Many delays are caused by incomplete or misleading applications from developers, not government inefficiency. Shot clocks don’t fix that. They just lower the bar.

Dashboards and report cards may look good in press releases. They don’t protect drinking water or prevent the next disaster.

Executive Order No. 2: Gas expansion and the nuclear distraction

This order accelerates renewables—which is good—but also promotes expanded natural gas infrastructure and nuclear power through a new task force.

Nuclear energy is not cheap, fast, or flexible. It is heavily subsidized, enormously expensive, and shifts massive long-term costs onto ratepayers. It crowds out cheaper renewable solutions and locks the state into decades of financial and environmental risk.

Waiving environmental standards for gas infrastructure and power-plant expansion will only encourage more fracking, more destruction of open space, and more air pollution.

New Jersey should be leading toward 100 percent renewable energy—not reviving industries dependent on political spin and blank checks.

Executive Order No. 4: The permitting czar power grab

Executive Order No. 4 creates a so-called “permitting reform” structure that is really a power grab—shifting authority from environmental agencies to the governor’s office through a newly created chief operating officer.

Under the banner of efficiency and affordability, this permitting czar is given sweeping authority to override agency expertise, pressure departments to weaken rules, and issue waivers from the top down. Rules and standards are taken out of the hands of scientists and professionals and placed in a political office where speed matters more than environmental protection.

This is political science replacing real science.

Environmental protections aren’t the problem—chronic understaffing and underfunding are. EO 4 doesn’t fix that. It weakens oversight, sidelines public input, and opens the door to rubber-stamp approvals at the exact moment New Jersey needs stronger review, not less.

The bigger picture: Borrowed tools, predictable outcomes

Taken together, these executive orders reveal a familiar pattern:

• environmental protections labeled as red tape
• climate funds treated as disposable
• short-term affordability prioritized over long-term solutions
• developers and utilities promised speed while communities bear the risk

Democrats should not borrow Republican tools and expect different outcomes.

You can’t fight deregulation in Washington while practicing it in Trenton.

You can’t defend public process while sidelining it at home.

A warning, not a condemnation

This is not an argument that Mikie Sherrill equals Trump. It is a warning that process determines outcomes—and that governing styles can converge even when values do not. Under the catch-all banner of affordability, rollbacks can be rationalized and protections quietly dismantled.

Cutting corners always costs more in the end. The environment doesn’t care about politics. Climate destruction—floods, fires, toxic spills, refinery explosions, poisoned water, and overdevelopment—makes New Jersey less affordable, not more.

New Jersey ranks near the top nationally for FEMA payouts and flood damage. We are number two in building in flood-prone areas. We have some of the worst air quality in the country. Only one of our watersheds meets the Clean Water Act’s highest standards. We are among the top states for temperature increase and third for sea-level rise.

Affordability means clean air, clean water, open space, and cleaning up toxic sites. Our economy depends on it. Tourism, food processing, and pharmaceuticals all rely on a healthy environment. So do public health and quality of life.

If Governor Sherrill wants DEP to be more effective and efficient, the answer is not “cutting red tape.” The answer is resources: adequate staffing, modern tools, and a management structure that treats ecosystems, public health, and permitting as interconnected.

Permitting should move efficiently by requiring applicants to reduce impacts, provide mitigation, and deliver real public benefit—not by weakening protections.

If we don’t draw clear lines now, we risk waking up one day to find that tools normalized in the name of pragmatism are being used to dismantle protections altogether.

It is not about what party you belong to or political beliefs; it’s about what actions you take on the environment.

We have only one New Jersey and one environment.

We must protect both—now and for future generations.

We do not get a second chance.