POLITICAL CLIMATE — People who want to get a sense of where the U.S. electorate stands on climate issues might want to look west and way down-ballot next week. Washington state voters will be deciding whether to keep or scrap their most aggressive climate policy via a ballot measure sponsored by conservative hedge fund manager
Brian Heywood. Officials who preside over or are considering starting similar carbon pricing programs are holding their breath for how voters in a progressive state will respond to the backlash. Democrats are sensing a broader opportunity to take ambitious climate policies directly to the voters and win, offering a runway to go further — but defeat could have consequences just as far-reaching in the opposite direction, your host reports.
"This initiative has national ramifications because people will be watching the result," outgoing Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in an interview. "When you test something, the result is important."
Washington’s program, which forces polluting companies to pay for emissions or reduce pollution to stay under a cap, has raised $2 billion to pay for climate-friendly projects since it started in 2023. The ballot measure would repeal the program, ban the state from ever enacting a similar one and pull back the landmark climate law that authorized it, which aims to cut emissions by 95 percent by 2050.
But it’s not just about the Evergreen State. If Washington's program survives, it could become a linchpin in a mushrooming North American carbon-pricing network. New York is working on its own “cap and invest” program and mulling lower price ceilings partly due to the same concerns around affordability that are fueling Washington's revolt. Canada’s program is under similar conservative pressures.
Maryland and Pennsylvania are also looking to stand up their own programs. Officials in California, which has a decade-old carbon pricing scheme, are fighting to save the Washington program and are already in talks with regulators there about adding the state to its linked market with Quebec. Gov. Gavin Newsom joined Inslee at a rally to defeat the ballot measure last week. Successful defense in the deep-blue state is no sure thing: Washington voters have rejected carbon-pricing programs
twice before, although never when one has already been in effect. “It's fair to say that anyone remotely interested in decarbonization at a large scale has to watch the results of this election,” said Reuven Carlyle, a former Washington state lawmaker who was the lead author of the 2021 law that established its program.
Heywood contends the program has fueled higher-than-projected gas price spikes, a charge the Inslee administration rejects — and thinks momentum is on his side. “You don't bring Jane Fonda and Gavin Newsom in to convert people in the middle,” said Heywood, referencing star power including Fonda’s attendance at a rally earlier this month and Bill Nye, “the science guy,” appearing in an ad
. “You bring them in to shore up your left flank. And that suggests to me that they're in trouble. They're worried that they're going to lose their own people.” But the “no” campaign has dwarfed the $7 million Heywood poured into the four ballot measures he’s sponsoring this cycle. It’s raised $16 million from a coalition that includes Microsoft, its co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer, as well as the Nature Conservancy and Salesforce. Even
oil giant BP put up $1 million to fight Heywood’s initiative. The measure is losing by a 52-35 margin, according to the “no” campaign’s internal polling shared first with POLITICO. And Sheri Call,
Washington Trucking Associations president and CEO, said she supports the initiative to rescind the program because of its impact on high fuel prices — but should it fail, linkage with California and Quebec is her next preference. Inslee acknowledged that a loss would cause "some anxiety" in other states and would be “very disturbing on a national level.” But a win would "give more confidence for other states to move forward.”
“Winning this,” he said, “will give people additional confidence for the variety of other ways we have to fight climate change in building codes and transportation policy and clean fuel standards and the like.”
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