Kate Wing's Blog
Jersey pride
October 24, 2007
Posted by Kate Wing in Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably
For some reason, we have a large number of people from New Jersey at NRDC. And not just in our east coast offices. One could speculate about how living in a state where the roadside signs say "warning: trees treated with noxious spray" drives you to clean up the environment, but you would want to speculate carefully if there were any Jerseyites in the room with you. Well, my Jersey colleagues, now you have a reason to be proud as Forbes magazine declared Jersey to be the 7th greenest state in the U.S. I mean, another reason to be proud. Please don't make me sing "Thunder Road" again.
Since I get my news from the Natural Patriot, I know that NRDC actually contributed some of the data for the survey and that Forbes looked at six categories: carbon footprint, air quality, water quality, hazardous waste management, policy initiatives, and energy consumption. While Forbes gives some detail about what the exact measures were, such as number of LEED certified buildings, they've missed a good opportunity to be more transparent about their analysis on the web. For example, looking at water quality are they using stormwater violations or just the standard "fishable/swimmable" categories for lakes and rivers? And what policies are they talking about? Only ones narrowly related to their six categories?
Of course, I have a bit of a bias here in that I'd like to see coastal and ocean resource protection figure somewhere in these rankings. After all, there are 35 coastal states (if you include the Great Lakes states, which Congress usually does) and the majority of the U.S. population lives in coastal counties. States like New York (#9) and California (#14) have umbrella Ocean Acts, laying out progressive policies for ocean management. You can also see the effects of better land use policies along the Mississippi down in the Gulf, so looking at coastal indicators can be a way to measure inland state performance, too.
Ultimately, Forbes had to make some choices and narrow things down to make their rankings workable. Rankings can be a great thing, driving states to try and improve their scores. I hope Forbes will consider airing out its methods and adding a few factors next time. They could look at the work Redefining Progress has done on environmental justice and ecological footprints. Or they could just look at their own magazine and ask why is it that only Washington State makes it into the top five as both a Green State (#3) and a Best State for Business (#5)?
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Comments
Emmett — Oct 25 2007 10:06 AM
Good points Kate. It would be very interesting to see a bit more detail on these rankings, and to better integrate marine issues and links between environmental progressiveness and business opportunities. Hopefully next time!