GOVERNOR CORZINE'S REMARKS AT ICAP ANNOUNCEMENT

LISBON, PORTUGAL - Governor Jon S. Corzine took part in the announcement of the International Carbon Action Partnership in Lisbon, Portugal today. ICAP will bring together regions and governments that are committed to mandatory cap-and-trade programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Below are the Governor's remarks as delivered:

Governor Jon S. Corzine’s Remarks at ICAP Announcement
Lisbon, Portugal
October 29, 2007
As delivered

We are enthusiastically seeking to create a carbon trading system called RGGI, which along with my colleague from New York, Governor Spitzer, and 8 other governors, we are working to establish.

We like our European colleagues find the details more difficult than the objectives, but I applaud all of you here today who put together the cap and trade initiative here in Europe, and like you, we recognize the science-based conclusion that climate change does exist.

Not everyone in the United States does, but certainly our group of Governors do, and we recognize that we must act expeditiously to reduce the rate of accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere, and we recognize where we are and where we're going is a dangerous situation.

We recognize that climate change will impose enormous costs on our citizens if we do nothing. That is the starting point.

The fact is that if we do not act, we will lose that opportunity. But more than that, we think this is a great opportunity as well as a challenge. Just as we saw electricity and the internet as great economic opportunities that brought change to our society, we think dealing with this climate crisis brings great economic opportunity to all of us in the 21^st century.

I think that the International Carbon Action Partnership is driving that home through the proposition that we should put in place a market based organization, to help both our economy but also to help how we deal with the climate change issue. We recognize the capacity of a broad based cap-and-trade program to send appropriately valued price signals while accelerating development low carbon technologies.

Ideally, the term broad based would mean a global platform or framework. Second best might be one of continental or national reach, such as you have put into place. Clearly in this regard, the European Union is more the role model to the United States, as we are troublingly lacking and it is only through the kinds of good work of our western colleagues and what is happening with the Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that there is progress being made at all.

I expect it is no surprise that as a former CEO of the investment bank Goldman Sachs, I like market based solutions. But practically speaking, it is my life in politics - first as a U.S. Senator and now as a Governor - that has led me to recognize that only government policy action can redress the clear market failure to price the high external costs of greenhouse gases. That's why I like this system, cap and trade, because it combines the best of the marketplace but also the opportunity of using government to help in implementing the program. To ensure this program works effectively and globally, I absolutely believe the work we are doing at ICAP today is essential.

We look to the lessons learned by the European Union and its ETS system, and there are many lessons that should be addressed that apply to us, I think present a great opportunity.

We must build a system that is based on sound science and evidence, real facts. We have to build the kind of registries and information base to build a cap and trade system that will work.

We need to make sure that we allow for transitions to occur. Just going immediately to an end game proposition is likely not to work, and some of the lessons we saw in the EU reinforce that view. But it is absolutely essential that we move as expeditiously as possible.

Finally, I'd say the most important issue, and I agree with the minister from Norway, we need to have a system that creates resources that allow us to invest in carbon reduction steps, and the new technology that will allow us to take on the big challenge of carbon in our world.

We have a big challenge, we need a big toolbox - that means we need to invest in those technologies and alternative energies that allow it to happen.

What ICAP is doing is building momentum for this process to move forward. I am proud to be an initial, inaugural signer, and we will work very hard to bring our nation, our federal government into this process. We hope that we will be a pump primer for that purpose.

So I appreciate very much, and I look forward as a representative of the people of the great state of New Jersey, to signing this partnership today. The penalties of inaction grow more severe and more irreversible each day, and I am quite certain that if we do not meet this challenge, the alternative is too hard to imagine.

Thank you all.

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Photos and audio and video clips from Governor Corzine's public events are available in the Governor's Newsroom section on the State of New Jersey web page, http://www.nj.gov/governor/news/