Our view: How Washington (state) can fight climate change
Washington, D.C., remains hopelessly gridlocked on the existential threat posed by human-induced climate change. But in Washington state, there’s an opportunity to do something about it on Election Day.
There, for the first time in America, voters will decide whether to tax carbon emissions that trap heat in the atmosphere.
While one state’s success in reducing its carbon footprint will not save the planet, passage of Initiative 1631 on Tuesday would show that people who are rightly concerned about global warming are willing to act — and demonstrate that carbon taxes don’t translate into economic ruination.
About 20 percent of global emissions are already impacted by carbon pricing. Initiative 1631 would be the first greenhouse gas tax levied by ballot initiative. It employs real-world compromise, exempting the state’s aerospace industry and largest polluter, a coalfired plant in Centralia that is already slated to phase out coal by 2025.
The ballot measure would still target
80 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas pollution. The fee ($15 per ton of carbon dioxide, starting in 2020) would rise for inflation and, for large emitters, by $2 per year through 2035.
Seventy percent of the revenue would be invested in clean energy projects; 25 percent would go to protect water and forests. And tens of millions of dollars would help communities and workers hurt by the tax.
Unsurprisingly, opposition to 1631 is strongest from the oil and gas industry. It remains unclear how much of the fee will be passed along to consumers. Costs are estimated to increase about
13 cents a gallon at the gas pump and
18 cents a gallon for home heating oil.
That’s not chump change, but the whole point of a carbon tax — and the reason a recent United Nations climate report highlighted the centrality of the concept — is to prevent fossil-fuel industries from continuing to use the atmosphere as a free waste dump.
Taxing carbon pollution is a simple, market-based means of curbing the practice and making renewable energy sources more competitive.
Other state ballots are populated with environmental ideas that simply mandate change, such as Arizona’s Proposition 127 and Nevada’s Question 6, which would require utilities to produce at least half of their electricity from renewable sources.
Those are blunt-edged approaches. Far better is an economic incentive that levels the playing field so green energy can gain traction. It’s why Republican elder statesmen last year endorsed a refundable national carbon tax.
Washington’s ballot measure could offer a worthwhile template for other states and — who knows? — maybe for lawmakers in Washington, D.C. To those who argue that we can’t afford to impose such a tax, the only answer is that we can’t afford not to.