New Jersey is has joined with European countries, other U.S. states, Canadian provinces, New Zealand and Norway to form the International Carbon Action Partnership (http://www.ICAPCarbonAction.com) to fight global warming. This will provide an international forum for governments and public authorities adopting mandatory greenhouse gas emissions cap and trade systems, where they can share experiences and best practices on emissions trading schemes. This cooperation will ensure that the programs are more compatible as the foundation of a global carbon market. Such a market will boost demand for low-carbon products and services, promote innovation, and allow cost-effective reductions so as to allow swift and ambitious global reductions in global warming emissions

Gov. Jon S. Corzine made the following remarks at an event announcing the coalition held in Lisbon, Portugal:

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.