Chris Christie's move only adds to speculation he'll enter the 2012 race. Christie: No cap and trade for N.J.

Heeding the call of conservative activists, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday pulled the Garden State out of a regional greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program for Northeastern states.

Conservative groups — led by Americans for Prosperity, which was founded by billionaires Charles and David Koch — have been pushing Christie ever since he took office to abandon the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.


Climate change — or to be more specific, rejecting cap-and-trade style programs — has become something of a litmus test in the GOP presidential process, and Christie's move only adds to speculation he'll enter the 2012 race.

Christie said at a news conference in Trenton, N.J., that economic conditions prompted his decision to be the first state to pull out of RGGI since it started operating in 2008. The program calls for power plants in the state to cut their emissions from the power sector 10 percent by 2018.

"This program is not effective in reducing greenhouse gases and is unlikely to be in the future," Christie told reporters.

"It's a phenomenal move on his part because this will deal a death blow to the RGGI program and send cap-and-trade away for good finally," said Steve Lonegan, New Jersey state director of Americans for Prosperity, who added that he expects New Hampshire and Maine to eventually drop out of the alliance too.

Lonegan said Christie's move doesn't involve presidential politics.

"There's good sound reasons why he's pulling New Jersey out and I don't believe it's because of any national aspirations," he said.

This wouldn’t be the first time RGGI was caught up in presidential politics, though.

In a move seen at the time as designed to satisfy potential Republican presidential primary voters, then Massachusetts GOP Gov. Mitt Romney pulled out of the still-developing program in 2005, saying it didn't have enough economic safeguards. His successor, Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, brought Massachusetts back in.

With New Jersey's departure by the end of the year, nine states remain in RGGI, the only active cap-and-trade program in the country for tackling global warming: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont, though several also face conservative campaigns similar to the one that prompted New Jersey's departure.

It’s been a roller coaster ride for the regional climate programs that exploded in number during the George W. Bush administration as advocates for curbing emissions looked for answers beyond Washington. Many were disappointed when a federal cap-and-trade bill failed to pass under President Barack Obama.

And now they’re on the defensive at the state level. An alliance of Midwestern governors planning a cap-and-trade program crumbled before it even got started. California voters last November did reject a ballot initiative seeking to kill the state’s landmark global warming law. But in New Mexico, Republican Gov. Susana Martinez is trying to pull out of the Western Climate Initiative.

While Christie’s move may be popular among conservatives, an environmental group says it won’t please the majority of voters.

Thursday, the Natural Resources Defense Council released polling that it said showed a majority of the state's voters want New Jersey in the climate program.

"It's mystifying to me why somebody would take an action like this unless its purely pandering to those who deny the existence of climate change," said Peter Iwanowicz, an American Lung Association official who led New York's role in RGGI from 2007 to 2010. "It's almost as if the governor is acting against the state's own self interest."

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 12:31 p.m. on May 26, 2011.