Editorials of The Times

It is baffling why Poland’s nationalist-controlled parliament would mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day — the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp on Polish soil — with a needless, foolish and insulting draft bill that would penalize any suggestion of complicity by the Polish state or the Polish nation in the Nazi death machine.

Apart from raising the very questions about the role of the Poles in the Holocaust that the drafters apparently want to hide, are we not past such self-serving posturing over one of history’s greatest crimes? Whatever dubious motives are behind this measure, Poland would do well to erase it as quickly as possible.

No doubt it pains Poles, whose country was overrun and occupied by Nazi Germany in World War II, when foreigners refer to Auschwitz and other extermination centers the Nazis set up in Poland as “Polish death camps.” They were Nazi death camps. At least 1.9 million Polish civilians were killed along with 3 million Polish Jews — about half of all Jews killed in the Holocaust. Some Poles tried to help Jews and have been recognized as “righteous among nations.”

Yet it is also undeniable that Poles were directly or indirectly complicit in the crimes committed on their land and that Poles were guilty of anti-Jewish pogroms during and after the war. These are the facts of that terrible history, and the Poles, like all other nations conquered by Germany that became embroiled in the Nazi atrocities, have an obligation to the victims and to the future to seek the full truth, however painful.

Regardless how it is parsed, the Polish bill is a blatant and chilling effort by a nationalist government waging an offensive against the rule of law and freedom of expression to discourage that search. “Whoever accuses, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich ... shall be subject to a fine or a penalty of imprisonment of up to three years,” reads an article of the draft. But what constitutes an accusation? Who determines the facts? Who will risk three years in prison to seek the historical truth?

The Polish government is not the first to try to shape the history to its advantage. The Soviet Union long preferred to refer broadly to “victims of fascism," avoiding any specific reference to Jews, and Austria for years painted itself as the “Nazis’ first victim,” denying all responsibility for its crimes.

Yet such thinking has largely been rejected for many years now.

In a striking coincidence, the Polish bill was passed just as the leader of a major Muslim institution in Saudi Arabia, a sternly Islamic kingdom better known for its virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli positions, publicly proclaimed the Holocaust “among the worst human atrocities ever.” “One would ask, who in his right mind would accept, sympathize or even diminish the extent of this brutal crime?” demanded Mohammad Alissa of the Muslim World League in a letter to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Indeed, that is the question Poland should be asking, and in fact many Poles have been asking and should be encouraged to keep asking.

Given the Trump administration’s indifference to climate change, the task of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas, has fallen largely to city and state governments. It is thus greatly encouraging that New Jersey, under its new governor, Phil Murphy, a Democrat, will join — more precisely, rejoin — the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a consortium of nine Eastern and New England states that has achieved substantial emissions reductions from large power plants since its start in 2009.

Murphy chose Highlands, a borough on the Atlantic shore hit hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, to announce that he would sign an executive order renewing New Jersey’s participation in the consortium. His predecessor, Chris Christie, a Republican, pulled the state out of the agreement in 2011, claiming he was trying to protect New Jersey ratepayers. A more plausible explanation lay in his nascent presidential aspirations. Climate change had become an unpopular subject among Republicans, and big donors like the Koch brothers were threatening to pull the plug on any candidate who favored regulation of greenhouse gases.

RGGI (pronounced “Reggie”) has, in fact, a Republican pedigree, dating to 2003, when Gov. George Pataki of New York invited other Northeast governors to join a regional effort to reduce carbon emissions. What followed was a regionwide system that sets a declining cap on emissions from large power plants — about 170 in total — and requires individual power producers to buy permits from state governments to pollute. As the cap declines, the price of the permits rises, giving utilities an incentive to find cheaper ways to reduce emissions.

According to various studies, power plant emissions have declined 40 percent since 2009, while the sale of the permits has raised $2.7 billion that has been invested in efficiency measures and renewable energy. Some of these reductions would have occurred anyway as plants shifted from coal to cheaper, cleaner-burning natural gas, and the reductions are a small fraction of the total greenhouse gases generated in the nine-state region. Even so, it’s a well-designed program that will only get stronger; in August, the nine states agreed to reduce emissions a further 30 percent by 2030. A national program along similar lines passed the House in 2009 but never came to a vote in the Senate.

There is one more thing Murphy can do to show that he’s bringing a new sensibility on energy and environmental matters to Trenton. That is to chart a sensible way forward for two New Jersey nuclear plants that keeps them alive for now but provides for the day when they become too old or costly. At issue are the Salem and Hope Creek generating stations. Their owner, Public Service Electric and Gas, is threatening to close them unless the Legislature provides a subsidy of $300 million a year. A bill to do exactly that came close to approval in the waning days of the Christie administration and is now in negotiations between the new governor and the state Senate.

Nobody doubts the value of the two plants. Nuclear power is carbon-free, and thus vital to the fight against climate change. But simply throwing money at them is shortsighted. California, Illinois and New York have all faced the issue of aging, uneconomical nuclear plants and have devised creative solutions that would significantly ramp up investment in renewables like wind and solar so that when the plants do close, there are carbon-free sources to take their place — not to mention new jobs for the displaced workers. Murphy should insist on a similarly creative and comprehensive plan.