Advocates pushing for a bill to require fossil-fuel companies to pay millions to address climate change will march from Newark to Trenton this week, according to a coalition of groups demanding the passage of the Polluters Pay Act.
The act, which climate activists in the state have pushed for more than a year, would bring in an estimated $2.5 billion per year from an estimated 82 fossil-fuel companies. The money would be spent on infrastructure and climate resiliency projects over the next two decades, advocates say.
The marchers will hold rallies in Newark, Jersey City, New Brunswick, Princeton, and Trenton over the course of the next week, according to a release. Organizers said they expect hundreds of rallygoers to join the marchers at the Newark event and more than a thousand at the Jersey City event.
“We’ve seen this playbook before. Big corporations rake in record profits, then walk away and stick working people with the bill,” said Nedia Morsy, the director of Make the Road New Jersey. “Working families shouldn’t be the ones shouldering the cost of climate change.”
The advocates join a growing chorus of New Jerseyans who seek to see the bill passed before this year’s state budget. In March, three Budget Committee senators — Renee Burgess (D-Irvington), Gordon Johnson (D-Englewood), and Patrick Diegnan (D-South Plainfield) — said the committee should pass the Polluters Pay Act first.
The Polluters Pay Act possesses 19 sponsors in the Senate and 42 in the Assembly, all Democrats. The bill was known as the Climate Superfund Act during the last legislative cycle. The Senate Budget Committee approved the bill during former Gov. Phil Murphy’s lame duck, but the bill didn’t receive a vote before the full Senate and went back to square zero at the end of Murphy’s term.
Business leaders in New Jersey, like the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, have criticized the legislation, arguing it could increase fuel costs for New Jerseyans and that it could be illegal. The group argues the bill would set a “chilling precedent that a New Jersey company can be retroactively targeted” and has fought the legislation in committee.
Progressive advocates are hopeful the bill could be passed this session, though.
“Families in Newark are paying more than their fair share for climate change,” said Larry Hamm, the founder of the People’s Organization for Progress. “They contaminated our land, polluted our air, and now our neighborhoods flood whenever it rains. Enough is enough.”
