” ‘Everything’ is not a choice.”, In the weeks after the death of 1631, climate activists took little time to grieve, refusing to declare defeat. On Jan. 10, 2019, the state Supreme Court denied the city of Seattle’s request for direct review of its effort to create an income tax. Oregon governor Kate Brown led … “The word ‘tax’ is probably the most reviled word,” said Hal Harvey, CEO of the firm Energy Innovation, which helps design renewable energy policies around the globe. Business and petroleum groups may take an interest, Hobbs added, in how the bill limits future fuel standards. “This is the greatest endeavor of our time,” he told a crowd of reporters at a workspace for energy efficiency innovators in Seattle. Those who build new buildings are rarely the ones paying the energy bills, so a tax on emissions is more likely to hit the building’s occupants. “That’s the Hindu in me!” Prakash quipped, meaning the tendency to think not just of this reincarnation, but the next and the one after that. Why were these so successful, compared to the carbon tax? And in the state of Washington, the carbon tax initiatives have suffered two successive defeats in 2016 and 2018. It's us but for your ears. By 9 p.m., Initiative 1631 was dead. People pulled out their phones to refresh elections pages. Still, it wasn’t advertising campaigns or partisanship alone that killed the tax: it got mired in the same murk that has slowed climate action for decades. In the wake of the election, the couple published half a dozen pieces analyzing the failure that drew on their own discussions. This election cycle, Jordan Stevenson was a fellow at the advocacy group Our Climate, which supported Washington’s carbon tax. ” ‘I’ll take a look.’ ” But in the end, she’s not sure he even voted. That, Prakash said, “was myopic.” (Mo McBroom, director of government relations for The Nature Conservancy’s Washington chapter, noted that 1631 differed from 732, as it “would have provided investments to make our state more resilient to climate change, including reducing risk of forest fire and addressing drought” and drew support from businesses, prominent philanthropists like Bill Gates, and health professionals.). In Washington, fossil fuel companies and lobbyists spent more than $30 million to defeat Initiative 1631, versus $17 million from supporters. Washington state lawmakers proposed a measure on Thursday to limit carbon pollution that would be the nation's first if passed. This was the state’s second attempt to tax carbon emissions, and in the months leading up to the vote, an unusually wide swath of Washington society had turned out in support. Bonds add an additional $3.5 billion, bringing the total to just under $17.1 billion. ... according to state data. Climate activists drew what they called a “thin, green line” at the coastal Northwestern states, adopting a term coined by de Place to describe their role as a barricade against a fossil fuel boom. Supporters of a Washington state ballot initiative that would charge a fee on carbon emissions from fossil fuels rally in October. And although the cost of new standards varies between industries, within them, the costs are the same. As the room emptied, I stood there refreshing my own phone, wondering what had just happened, and what it might mean. Dolšak thought it was doomed, while Prakash acknowledged ruefully, “I thought it would pass.”, Not that Dolšak enjoyed being right; 1631’s defeat left them both deflated, she said. On the other hand, voters—most of whom aren’t economists—tend to prefer energy standards because they put the costs on those most directly responsible for carbon-emitting systems, the real estate developers and car designers. U.S. impacts of climate change are intensifying, federal report says, Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere may soar to levels not seen in 56 million years, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Despite the work of scientists and researchers, whose models are getting better at explaining the chaotic relationships between climate and weather, the truth is that the destructiveness of a particular storm is hard to link straight to a changing climate—what experts call “the attribution problem.” Smoky summer days in Idaho can seem far removed from a tax, or fee, that will somehow reduce carbon emissions, somehow slow climate change, and somehow decrease wildfires. Charging $15 per ton of carbon, the fee would raise about $7.9 billion over the next 10 years. Senate leader proposes carbon tax with 15 cent per gallon hike to gasoline Fri., Feb. 22, 2019 A carbon tax proposal in front of the Washington Legislature includes an … Jay Inslee, seated center, poses for a photo with lawmakers and others after he signed the state operating budget, Tuesday, May 21, 2019… Economists generally support a carbon tax over regulations or building standards, because it costs all emitters fairly, in proportion to their emissions. In Washington, hydroelectric dams, not fossil fuels, have long provided the state’s energy. The rural communities of Hoquiam and Aberdeen unanimously banned new crude oil storage facilities in their towns. Effective date 5/7/2019. In this way, climate change can boggle the imagination. Sponsors: Braun, Ranker, Hunt. Voters told her: “The money I pay in taxes, the increase at the gas pump, it will never benefit me.”. “(Fossil fuel companies) have spent centuries creating a system of dependency,” Aiko Schaefer, one of the architects of 1631 and the director of Front and Centered, a climate advocacy coalition for people of color, said. Nives Dolšak and her husband, Aseem Prakash, are both professors, focused on climate change and its human dimensions, at the University of Washington, in Seattle, who spend their days studying climate policy and pushing environmentalists to reflect on their approach. Initiative 1631’s demise might have had something to do with moments like this, where the connection between taxing carbon and more immediate fears about one’s health or one’s job becomes obscured. The costs of relocating communities farther inland from the coasts, for example, won’t be recouped from sales of Teslas. Washington voters, in other words, were given a specific action to undertake while they lived out the specific consequences of climate change. In the US, advocates are crafting an economic stimulus package—a Green New Deal. Under bills introduced in the House and Senate Tuesday, a proposed tax of $20 per metric ton of carbon emissions would start on July 1, 2019 and increase annually by … Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation. But in the Northwest, that’s not the case. She came to believe it was a failure of Washington’s green self-mythology: “In Washington, we’re excited to support environmental action, as long as we don’t have to pay for it,” she said. March 27, 2019. A second wave of results had come in, and the tide had turned. “It is a moment of great peril but it is also a moment of great promise.” He unveiled a plan he hopes to put before the state Legislature this year, one that encompasses clean fuel standards, tighter building codes and a shift to 100 percent clean energy. state’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gasses and account for 27 percent of the carbon pollution in Washington. “The essence of strategy is making choices,” Harvey said. I thought they could tell me what killed the carbon tax, and I spent many rambling hours on the phone with them, discussing the tax’s details, and its flaws. New tax hard to swallow; Washington Democrats pull fast one in Legislature’s last weekend By The News Tribune Editorial Board April 30, 2019 12:30 PM , It appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. By 2010, the decline of the US coal market had become obvious, and the fossil fuel industry began to eye the West Coast for access to Asian markets. The carbon fee would add 15 cents per gallon, an increase of 21 cents per gallon. By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from Mother Jones and our partners. In August, a mother orca lost her calf, then carried its body on her nose for 17 days, a painful reminder of species loss and habitat degradation. In the end, the measure passed in just three places: Seattle’s King County, Port Townsend’s Jefferson County and the county that encompasses the San Juan Islands. President Barack Obama’s White House seemed committed, along with much of the world, to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases through regulations and other incentives, with states like Washington, Oregon and California poised to help lead the way. “It comes out as a family compromise.” What they arrived at was simple: The failure of 1631 was about more than a deep-pocketed oil and gas campaign machine; it spoke to climate action’s broader challenges. Recent polls suggested a close call on the measure, officially called Initiative 1631, a local, political effort to address the global challenge of climate change. But when people need to choose between their day-to-day concerns and a future pot of money for projects they can’t imagine, the day-to-day wins. Initiative 1631 differed in that it proposed to use revenue from carbon fees to invest in projects to reduce pollution. The failure of Washington’s carbon tax proved a dim coda to the state’s long fight to control rising temperatures and reverse their effects on its most vulnerable communities. If we have to name 1631’s killer, it might be what geographer Mike Hulme called the “climate of climate change.” Hulme, an expert in climate change theory at the University of Cambridge, argues that our concept of climate is only partly rooted in objective truths about the material world. Not long ago, I met Golden in a noisy coffee shop a little over a mile away from the site of the election night failure, for a final postmortem. “If you had to choose between performance standards and a carbon tax, you’d be insane to pick a carbon tax,” said Harvey. The celebrations lasted a few minutes. The fight to block fossil fuel infrastructure drew widespread support in Washington and Oregon. Putting a policy to that will be as daunting as it is urgent. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? Terminals, refineries and railways exist in the material realm, de Place said. The carbon fee and gas tax account for about $10 billion of the roughly $13.6 billion in fees in the package. Climate change turning into ‘medical emergency,’ experts say. Last fall, the majority of voters in my legislative district voted against Initiative 1631, the carbon tax scheme. Just a few weeks after the election, the National Climate Assessment confirmed that all that was likely just an ominous portent of things to come: Climate change threatens the region’s infrastructure with landslides, rising seas and aberrant weather, while its most vulnerable communities face deteriorating air and water quality. Listen on Apple Podcasts. Still, they argued about the relative importance of this or that point and right up to election night, they were divided on one key point. We're a nonprofit (so it's tax-deductible), and reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget. She also talked to her father, back home in Vancouver. This story was funded with reader donations to the High Country News Enterprise Journalism Fund. But Initiative 1631 failed, and Washington must now confront a darker version of itself, in the kind of identity crisis that comes only in defeat. Without a course correction, climate activists may well find themselves right back where they started, raising the body count on failed climate initiatives while blithely marching forward. And not long after the US midterms, France underwent a major political crisis, brought in part by a fuel tax meant to curb emissions. Copyright © 2021 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress. Revenue impact. Then a strange hush swept the room, rippling outward from the televisions. But for now climate activists are stuck with the art of the possible. Those climate hawks who believe that extreme weather events, like wildfires and hurricanes, will inspire climate inactivists are overly optimistic, Prakash said. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Less than a month after the carbon tax failed, Gov. “All aspects of human life are now analyzed or represented in relation to climate: gender, violence, literature, security, architecture, the imagination, football, tourism, spirituality, ethics, and so on,” Hulme wrote. Jay Inslee on Thursday unveiled a 2021-23 operating budget proposal that includes $57.6 billion in spending for state operations such as schools, prisons, and social services. The line for the bar stretched the length of the room, and a bank of television screens on the far wall drew barely a glance as the evening progressed. When she spoke to voters in Spokane, not many people there knew what the tax was, let alone what it had to do with the wildfire smoke outside their windows. A building standard, for example, might require different windows, different insulation, a different design … and by the time you’re done, it’s hard to disentangle what you did from what you might have done otherwise, and even harder to say how much more money per ton of carbon was effective. Washington Gov. Reimagining it will require a radical overhaul of societal structures, a process she thinks will take longer than an election cycle or two. The carbon fee is part of a transportation funding package that marks Washington's third major attempt to create such a policy since 2018. Golden’s mind was on what would come next, including setting aside the fight for a carbon tax, for now. But the moral urgency, the sense that life after oil is a real possibility, the feeling that anything useful can be done — those aren’t. After voters turned down a 2018 ballot initiative for a carbon tax, Republican state Sen. Curtis King said it was too soon to revisit the issue. Establishing a carbon pollution tax and investment program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, facilitate the transition to a clean energy economy, and invest in K-12 education and other vital public services. It made sense here, in a green-leaning state where calls to climate action ring louder than in, say, coal-dependent Wyoming. In Oregon, voters elected a blue bloc of representatives, including Golden’s brother Jeff in southern Oregon, who promised to block permits for an LNG export terminal at Jordan Cove. Golden thinks the first step is to regain a sense that our collective actions can actually affect the course of climate change. This op-ed in The Snohomish Times on Jan. 19, 2019 explains what happened with the court ruling and what to expect moving forward. “2019 is a year we can make a lot of progress on this,” Nick Abraham, a spokesman for the Yes on 1631 campaign, told me. The state put a limit on emissions in 2008. If people were nervous, it didn’t show. The fight for the carbon tax, then, becomes a fight for what the future of our society ought to look like—and on that, we remain deeply conflicted. Terms of Service apply. The curious death of Initiative 1631 and what … In Washington, even as winter faltered and delivered a meager snowpack, concerns over climate change had been quickly replaced by more immediate worries: a federal shutdown and a volatile stock exchange. In the weeks after, as they ate dinner or got ready for work, they’d dissect the results: Is Washington turning conservative? Given this, the fight over what to do about rising temperatures epitomizes all our other disagreements over what justice—let alone climate justice—might, and should, look like. On our dependence on fossil fuels, “we’re fighting something that’s dying,” Golden told me. For Dolšak, the less optimistic of the two, the tax’s failure reinforced her sense that sweeping climate action is far from imminent. Outside, the winter weather was particularly nasty, with rain that flew sideways and high winds shoving people around the sidewalks. She used that argument to talk to her dad about climate change, invoking his sense of familial values and his worry for his kids and grandkids. “We did it,” a young woman standing next to me said. Seattle made a commitment in 2002 to eliminate the city’s carbon emissions from electricity, one of the first American cities to do so, and voters passed renewable energy standards in 2006. Over a cup of tea, Golden dissected, and then dissected again, the faults of the tax and the future of climate action. This was the state’s second attempt to tax carbon emissions, and in the months leading up to the vote, an unusually wide swath of Washington society had turned out in support. A few campaigners sat hunched over computers in the back corner, but mostly, it seemed, people were there to socialize. In the past decade, the Northwest has seen a slew of wins in fights against carbon-emitting infrastructure—and a slew of losses on climate policy. W hen it comes to energy policy, Washington has one resource that appears infinitely renewable: carbon-tax proposals.. Al Gore proposed a carbon tax back in 1992. Let our journalists help you make sense of the noise: Subscribe to the. Actually, the United States already has a carbon tax. This wasn’t the end, they swore; it was just the beginning. Given these reminders, now would have seemed a prime time for Initiative 1631. In 2018, voters in Kalama, Washington, elected Mayor Mike Reuter, who promised to block construction of a plant for methanol, a fossil fuel with a heavy pollution fingerprint. Washington state on Tuesday rejected a carbon tax ballot initiative that supporters hoped would be the first voter-approved tax on fossil fuel emissions to fight climate change. All Rights Reserved. Available Documents. But what killed the carbon tax was not a blind, party-line vote: the measure failed in red and blue strongholds alike. It also sets the carbon fee at a fixed rate, without increases over time. Rather, she’ll look to her competitor at Peugeot, who is under the same constraints. We finished our drinks and parted ways. A 20-year-old woman with square glasses and a knack for getting people to talk, she spent weeks knocking on doors in the Spokane area, on the far eastern side of the state, along with her husband. Washington may already be learning its lesson. By 2008, Golden had helped craft local and state commitments to clean energy, and climate activists stepped back, thinking their local fight was mostly over and the federal government would pick up the slack. It is impossible to separate ourselves from the climate far enough to get a clear look at it, something equally true of many injustices and economic structures. However, the issue is still alive in our court system. 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