The people of Washington State voted to pass the most ambitious price on carbon savings in the country. A large majority of voters, 62 percentrejected a ballot initiative to repeal the state’s Climate Commitment Act, the cap-and-trade law that has already raised more than $2 billion for cleaning up transportation, transitioning to clean energy and helping people cope with the effects to adapt to a changing climate.
On an otherwise depressing election night for voters who see climate change as a major concern, there was an air of victory Tuesday night at the Seattle Convention Center, where Gov. Jay Inslee and several hundred organizers with the campaign opposing the repeal gathered for a watch. party. As news poured in that former President Donald Trump was the favorite to win the presidential election, many in the crowd did their best to focus on their success in saving the state’s landmark carbon-cutting law. Inslee, the outgoing Democratic governor whose signature climate legislation is in jeopardy, said the results should encourage states to act on climate change.
“I really feel like it was important from a national perspective because every state legislator can now look at Washington and say, ‘This is a winning issue,'” Inslee said in an interview with Grist. “It’s something you can defend and win big. And we won big.”
Inslee said the effort to defeat the initiative emphasized the concrete, local benefits of the program to voters, rather than getting into the weeds on how cap-and-trade works. “We focused on the easiest thing for people to turn their minds and hearts around,” Inslee said, pointing to the tangible economic benefits the repeal would take away: funding for transportation, schools and firefighting.
Putting any kind of price on carbon has long been seen as politically risky. Opponents of Washington’s Climate Commitment Act, including Brian Heywood, the hedge fund manager driving the repeal effort, have blamed it for raising gas prices. The ballot measure would not only have lowered the state’s price on pollution — it would also have prevented the state from ever enacting a similar policy in the future.
The resounding public support for Washington’s cap-and-trade program “is going to reverberate from coast to coast,” said Joe Fitzgibbon, a Democratic state representative who helped pass the legislation in 2021, during a speech at the convention center said. Officials in states including New Jersey, Maryland and New York were tracking similar policies, and they were tracking the results in Washington to see how voters responded. “I know that there are states that are thinking, ‘What can we do?'” Fitzgibbon told Grist. “And especially when there’s a vacuum at the federal level, that’s when I think you see the most motivation in heads of state to move.”
Kate Yoder / Grist
Cap-and-trade already exists in California, and in a more limited form below a network of states in the Eastbut Washington’s law is more ambitiousaiming to cut emissions by almost half by 2030, using 1990 levels as a baseline, and by 95 percent by 2050.
“Washington state is the gold standard for how we tackle climate change in a way that’s inclusive, in a way that’s politically popular, in a way that will actually decarbonize,” said Joe Nguyễn, a Democratic state senator who chairman of the state’s environment, energy. , and Technology Committee. A review of existing climate policies in 41 countries in August found this Carbon pricing programs were the most likely of any policy to lead to large emissions cuts.
The Climate Commitment Act’s adoption in 2021 followed more than a decade of failed attempts to put a price on pollution in Washington State. It requires companies to buy pollution permits in quarterly auctions, a way to generate money for climate solutions while at the same time incentivizing businesses to reduce their emissions. The number of permits available decreases over time. The program has so far raised billions to, among other things, make public transportation free for youth, install energy-efficient heat pumps in homes, and reduce local air pollution.
Across the state, nearly 600 organizations joined the “No on 2117” coalition to defend the law, eventually raising $16 million. Many businesses, religious organizations, health advocates and agricultural organizations were on board. At the event on Tuesday, there were security guards representing labor unions, the chairman of the Suquamish tribe, and a public policy executive from the tech giant Amazon. “We have assembled, all of us, the most extraordinary coalition in the history of this state, on any issue, ever,” Gregg Small, executive director of the group Climate Solutions, said in a speech at the convention center.
The initiative faced other headwinds. Ballots expressly warned voters of the fiscal cost of the repeal, despite appeal to the state supreme court by the Washington State Republican Party to get that language removed. In addition, Washington’s gas prices – which have skyrocketed $5, the highest in the countryin 2023 – has now come down to approx $4 per gallon.
Another ballot initiative, which would complicate Washington state’s plans to get off natural gas, was too close to call Wednesday. With ballots still to be counted, 51 percent of voters approved the measure, which targets new building codes that make installing natural gas more difficult and legislation to help the state’s largest utility accelerate its use of clean energy.
Now that Washington’s cap-and-trade program has survived repeal, the state can move forward with plans to links its carbon market with California’s and Quebec’s. The state can also begin the years-long process of implementing the Climate Commitment Act’s program to regulate air quality. This summer the state started releasing grants to help reduce air pollution in “congested” communitiesbut much of the work was on hold while the state waited to see if voters would uphold the law, according to David Mendoza, the director of public engagement and policy at the Nature Conservancy in Washington.
The whole repeal initiative may have been a blessing in disguise, Nguyễn said. It gave people a chance to pay attention to all the work Washington State was doing on climate change that might otherwise have been ignored. “I actually want to thank Brian Heywood and his cronies for putting this on the ballot, and just reaffirming to everyone that we care about climate change in Washington state.”
