I am excited about our family’s move from Red Bank to Farmingdale, New Jersey, in the fall. The house is new, and we have a quarter acre, which feels like a luxury for crowded New Jersey. We are on Adelphia Road, right down the street from Camp Sacajawea, a Girl Scout campsite and a rite of passage for many “Jersey Girls.” My wife went to Camp Sac as a girl, and her mom, a lovely, if loud, working-class Italian woman, chaperoned a sleepover at the campsite. She brought a blow-up mattress instead of a sleeping bag and positioned it in their tiny cabin. In the morning, all the campers woke to Susie snoring loudly. They all tried to wake her but were unable, and finally, they had to roll her off the mattress.
So where was I? Farmingdale. The town of Farmingdale is paradoxical, like most of New Jersey: horse farms next to industrial mining plants, golden apiaries across from pharmaceutical companies, etc. One of the town’s biggest draws for me is a large brewery located on a horse farm called Oak Cliff Farms, which brings in an eclectic mix of mining plant workers, organic farmers, work-from-home moms, and adorable children traversing vast open fields directly across from a strip mall.
Shopping malls have always embodied the soulless side of New Jersey to me. The latest iterations are mostly empty dinosaurs gutted by the T Rex of inflation: cavernous department stores littered with discarded clothing racks and hangers, the pungent smell of toxic masculinity wafting from Aeropostale, shoppers exhausted by the sheer giganticism of mall culture slouching in massage chairs next to plastic plants, etc. What is this artifice, right?
But New Jersey is not soulless, not merely industrial. Forty percent of the state is forest, and there are bends in the Navesink River near my current home in Red Bank that are stunning and rich with abundant birdlife, herons, hawks, and egrets. Horse farms dot the river’s shore, pungent, bucolic, littered with estuaries and little valleys. The estuaries are most gorgeous, burbling hidden creeks deep in the woods; here is James Fennimore Cooper’s description of the highlands around the Navesink River in his novel, “The Water-Witch”:
“ Their sides were clothed with forests, which came quite down to the water’s edge in many places; while, here and there, a bold promontory would jut into the stream, covered with evergreens, and wearing an air of perennial verdure, that was most grateful to the eye...”
I recently rode my motorcycle up into the highlands overlooking the Navesink. It took me to a hidden valley populated with farmers, century-old houses, vast meadows, etc., like popping into a Victorian novel. As I ascended out of the valley, I had a high expectation of more of the same. What did I find on the other side? A sprawling country club.
All this begs the question: Can capitalism and environmentalism live in harmony in this state? New Jersey’s real GDP from 2000 to 2023 was an impressive $656 billion, and its rate continues to grow. Job growth is strong despite a slight uptick in unemployment.
Yet, New Jersey suffers from some of the highest death rates from asthma due to poor air quality in the country, partially attributed to cars and refineries. My county, Monmouth County, had four orange rating days and two red rating days for poor air quality in 2023 and received a “D” rating from the state for air quality. Sea levels are rising, as are extreme precipitation events, according to The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Offshore wind turbines were proposed as a fossil fuel energy alternative, then shelved, deemed too expensive due to competition from lower power prices and the higher borrowing rates for expensive equipment.
I embody the state’s dangerous environmental ambivalence. My family is adamant about keeping our carbon footprint small; we live in a modest house and have downsized from two cars to one car and an adventure motorcycle (no self-interest there ;). Of course, the bike is problematic. I love to tear around in the Pine Barren’s sand with it, and though I stay on sanctioned trails per the DEP and away from plants and wildlife, I can hardly call my hobby environmentally sound. Once, when my bike’s guttural engine spooked some horses near where I was riding, I found myself muttering apologies to them.
The state’s approach to land management and air quality is failing, as are my attempts to rationalize my off-road riding.
So what is to be done? A simple step forward may be to accelerate the state’s green economy. Multiple offshore wind projects are in contention after the failed initial plan; let’s greenlight them. Electric car (and motorcycle) chargers are becoming ubiquitous; let’s double their growth by doubling tax subsidies for those who buy electric. Let’s increase the DEP’s Green Acres program budget for land management and continue promoting and expanding our open land. And, yes, let’s reduce the amount of motorcycling allowed in Wharton State Park if studies prove it harms local ecology.
Harmony between capitalism and environmentalism in New Jersey is possible if we understand and overcome the ambivalence we might have toward that assimilation and work both personally and locally to maintain the “perennial verdure” of this land.