Can a WA State climate policy train wreck be averted?

TOPICS: CLIMATE CHANGE, CARBON, GLOBAL WARMING, WASHINGTON STATE, JAY INSLEE, INITIATIVE 732, CAP-AND-TRADE, CARBON TAX, CARBON WASHINGTON, ALLIANCE FOR JOBS AND CLEAN ENERGY

A group of spunky citizens frustrated by the long-term failure to enact climate policy in Congress or the state legislature takes matters into its own hands and seeks to place a carbon tax initiative on the ballot.  As the signature gathering deadline approaches they close on their target.

Labor and social justice organizations that were once only marginally engaged in the climate issue elevate it to a top-priority concern.  They join in a new alignment to advance climate policy at the state level, emphasizing the opportunity to build equity in the process of reducing pollution.

These two developments in Washington state evidence a growing climate movement, one that now is spreading widely among progressive organizations and the citizen grassroots.  Facing accelerating climate chaos across the planet – from deep droughts to massive storms to polar ice loss – this is a movement that needs to inspire hope.  And its spread is one of the most hope-building trends around. The climate movement is finally growing to the scale of the climate challenge.

But more people coming to the table creates a profound challenge, now fully realized in the Evergreen State.  A movement that could once be coordinated by a small number of groups and players has grown beyond that possibility.  Multiple approaches and philosophies are in play.  With that have come conflict and division.   Prospects loom for snatching climate-policy defeat from the jaws of movement-growth victory.

TWO TRAIN WRECK SCENARIOS

The basic situation is that Carbon Washington has successfully mobilized a significantly volunteer effort for its Initiative 732 carbon tax.  As of this writing CarbonWA has gained 325,067 of the 330,000 signatures it targeted by Nov. 30 to assure enough names.  The number needed to qualify is 246,372.  CarbonWA has already turned in a substantial portion to the state.  If a sufficient number of valid signatures goes before the Legislature in January, that body has the option to pass the measure or put it on the November 2016 ballot. (Update - as of Dec. 2 the campaign exceeded its goal, reaching 334,000.  It is currently mounting a last month campaign to reach 350,000.  These numbers make ballot qualification highly probable.)  The Legislature could also accompany that with one of its own.

Meanwhile, the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy has built an alignment of progressive groups that backed Gov. Jay Inslee’s carbon cap and trade bill in the 2015 Legislature.  The Alliance has announced its intention to run its own carbon pricing initiative, but has not announced details. Alliance members, particularly groups representing communities of color, object to I-732’s design, recycling all revenues from a $25/ton carbon tax to tax cuts and credits. They maintain that a portion of revenues should be devoted to funding green jobs and other investments in just transition from fossil fuels, and that CarbonWA has not been responsive to their concerns, and was not designed through an inclusive process that would have incorporated those concerns.  The arguments and politics were covered in a previous post.

The Alliance has made multiple statements that it regards the presence of competing initiatives on the 2016 ballot as a recipe for defeat, and has committed in a joint statement with CarbonWA not to run two initiatives.  The Alliance also asserts that its polling indicates the revenue-neutral design of 732 is in itself a loser, and that people would actually be more willing to vote for a measure that invests in solutions. Now that I-732 appears to be headed to ballot qualification, at least two train wreck scenarios rise. 

Scenario #1 -  The Alliance goes ahead and files an initiative to the people that gains its signatures in 2016 and ballot qualifies (as opposed to CarbonWA’s initiative to the Legislature which needed to get its sign-ups in 2015).  The contest between the two initiatives turns nasty and fossil fuel interests leverage the conflict to discredit both in the public eye, resulting in defeat.  This poisons the well for passage of carbon pricing in Washington state for some time to come

Scenario #2 - The Alliance opts not to run an initiative, but it and its supporters stand aside.   Disunity in climate forces adds to the uphill challenges already faced by I-732.  The initiative goes down to defeat, also poisoning the carbon-pricing well. 

It is important to note that neither of these scenarios are inevitabilities in themselves.  Victory in an initiative fight will be determined by the degree to which the climate concerns of Washington citizens can be aroused.  A successful campaign will connect fossil fuel pollution with climate impacts on the state including record drought and wildfires, salmon death in overheated rivers, intense and sometimes unseasonal storms, and shellfish industry-killing ocean acidification. Success in elevating climate urgency might overcome the disadvantages of disunity.    The details of policy will come second.  

It should also be noted that many CarbonWA supporters push back on the idea that a ballot loss will be fatal to future climate policy passage. Better to take a swipe at bat and push the climate issue by talking to hundreds of thousands of people on the streets, they say. Whatever the case, if 732 goes on the ballot it creates facts on the ground with which the entire climate community must deal.  

Could this conflict have been avoided? And are there conflict resolution paths forward that improve the odds of victory? 

STRATEGIC MISCALCULATIONS, PREDICTABLE OUTCOMES

To answer the first question, yes, this could have been avoided.  A set of strategic miscalculations on the part of the state climate policy establishment set up this dilemma.  CarbonWA had been moving toward an initiative for several years, but would not have filed I-732 if the governor’s climate bill had been successful, or if the governor and/or the state’s climate groups had been ready with their own initiative.  It was clear almost from the day the bill dropped it was not going to pass.  It was also crystal clear that CarbonWA would file its initiative, as it did in April, when there was no other measure on the table. Though the Alliance was talking about an initiative then, CarbonWA leadership noted with some skepticism that climate groups had been discussing an initiative for years without taking action.  If the governor and the groups had been ready to fill the initiative space when they saw legislative failure looming, the situation now would be entirely different. 

The fact they did not occupy the initiative space immediately, and let CarbonWA seize it, leads to an unavoidable conclusion.  They miscalculated that a significantly volunteer effort without several hundred thousand dollars in the bank would not have the juice to gain the signatures.   In closing on apparent success CarbonWA has presented them with an unanticipated fait accompli. There was a critical disconnect in this, a lack of comprehension of the deep hunger and moral urgency of grassroots citizens to do whatever they could to address the climate crisis.  There was also a lack of appreciation for how frustrated people had become about repeated failures to pass meaningful climate policy.  They were no longer willing to trust professionally staffed groups or political leadership to get the job done.  These sentiments extended far past the core organizers of CarbonWA, as successful efforts to build a volunteer army and broad funder base prove. 

Cascadia Planet predicted this outcome last January. ". . . the climate and environmental community has greeted the governor’s plan with enthusiastic support.  This demonstrates a deep hunger for carbon limits of any sort. However, if the governor cannot pull one out of a hat and his package stalls, that same hunger will attach to CarbonWA’s proposal. The momentum created by the campaign for the governor’s cap-and-trade will transmit to CarbonWA’s BC-style carbon tax."

One reason that the governor and the groups should have been ready to fill the initiative space was to avert a climate movement split. The fractiousness to come could have easily been anticipated. Cascadia Planet forecast the split in a Nov. 25, 2014 post, "Climate Justice in collision with revenue-neutral carbon policies?"   Of course, CarbonWA made its own contribution to the situation. Before CarbonWA filed its initiative, communities of color representatives asked the group to adopt a policy that did not recycle all revenues, but direct some of the revenues to invest in transition from fossil fuels.  CarbonWA had already fixed its policy, and so a collision was coming.  Greater flexibility on the part of CarbonWA could have at least gone a long way to avert this.  But CarbonWA leaders are convinced that revenue-neutrality is necessary to attract bipartisan support.  So here is a place where differing approaches and philosophies are coming to the fore.  

Still, if there had been an alternative initiative on the table, the collision could have been avoided. A series of strategic miscalculations led up to that. The first was that the Washington State Senate could be flipped back to the Democrats in the 2014 election, opening the way for legislative passage of climate policy.  The assumption was that high-net-worth funder money from California billionaire Tom Steyer and others, coordinated with get-out-the-vote efforts, could overcome the traditional Democrat disadvantage in off-year elections plus the disadvantage the incumbent’s party has in the sixth year of a presidential term. Meanwhile, the governor’s Carbon Emissions Reduction Taskforce, which included core Alliance members Climate Solutions, American Lung Association, One America, SEIU and Washington State Labor Council, had spent months designing a legislative proposal in the expectation that the governor would have a Senate he could work with. Election day defeat effectively eliminated that possibility, leaving a Republican Senate led by oil industry minions. Notable among them was election target Doug Ericksen, chair of the Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee, a chokepoint for any climate legislation. 

Nonetheless, the governor went ahead with a bill.  Unfortunately, it bore little resemblance to what one would want in an initiative.   Focusing the lion’s share of carbon revenues on solving the state’s education and transportation funding crises, it devoted a relatively small share to the kind of just transition funding the Alliance is now demanding.  Ironically, the major portion of that was revenue recycling to lower-income families meant to buffer the impact of higher energy prices, along the lines of funding offered by 732.  The bill was designed for legislative passage in the forlorn hopes that a few Republican legislators could be peeled away to solve the budget crisis.  It was not designed to tee up an initiative.  

It was also a cap-and-trade, a policy design that draws skepticism from climate justice groups who label carbon trading as a “false solution” to climate change.  Among other reasons, they object to letting polluters buy offsets that allow high-emissions facilities to continue operating in low-income neighborhoods, as well as forest carbon purchases in developing nations that deprive traditional peoples of land rights. In October and November climate justice groups conducted two “no false solutions” workshops in Seattle to drive home their opposition to carbon trading.  Sponsors included Seattle Rising Tide, leader in the local direct action movement against fossil fuels; Bayan, a progressive Filipino coalition, and Alliance Steering Committee member Got Green.  To its credit the issue is being debated in Alliance ranks.  

In an alternative scenario, when it became clear the Republicans would hold the State Senate, making bill passage unlikely, the governor would have submitted a bill that reflected the content of a prospective initiative - With substantial funding for green jobs, clean energy and just transition, and a simple, non-controversial policy design that would draw widespread support.  If the bill was blocked, the governor and/or the groups would have been ready with an initiative to the 2015 Legislature, the same vehicle CarbonWA employed.  Who knows?  Maybe the threat to file an initiative would have given the governor more leverage with the Republican Senate. 

Why didn’t this happen?  In the final analysis, the governor and the groups did not want to commit to an initiative at that point.  Their own polling made them uncertain an initiative would pass, and they did not want to take the risk.  So when the governor’s bill hit the wall, CarbonWA literally took the initiative and captured the momentum. Its initiative to the Legislature kicked off the signature campaign in May. One can only think that if the governor and the groups had employed a different political calculus that correctly assessed the hunger of grassroots citizens to take action, and CarbonWA's ability to leverage it, they would have moved earlier with their own initiative, whatever the risks.  

ENVISIONING CONFLICT RESOLUTION SCENARIOS

By now, there is a lot of spilled milk under the bridge, a number of heated statements (which in the spirit of conflict resolution I will leave aside), a whole lot of hurt feelings, and high potential for a climate policy wreck on the order of an oil train explosion.  Assuming I-732 will gain enough signatures to qualify, are there scenarios that avert train wreck conflicts and lead to victory?  There are many moving pieces and complex nuances, some of which I find frankly boggling.  But here goes:

Scenario #1 – CarbonWA responds to pressure to not file its signatures, and instead unifies with the Alliance and its clearly superior connections and resources.  In return CarbonWA has a prominent voice in the Alliance initiative design.  But would CarbonWA be willing to do this, knowing many volunteers and supporters might be alienated by such a decision?  In any event, this scenario would require an absolutely solid commitment by the Alliance to run an initiative with agreement on mutually acceptable language.  This would likely have to happen in the next month because CarbonWA loses leverage past the signature-filing deadline of Jan. 1, 10 days before the next legislative session starts.

Scenario #2 – The Alliance opts not to go ahead with its own carbon pricing initiative, and also opts to put resources behind 732 despite its objections in order to put a basic carbon pricing framework in place.  Averting a carbon pricing defeat would be a powerful incentive. This is particularly the case because, as Cascadia Planet previously reported, inside players fear an initiative loss would also drag down Inslee’s 2016 reelection campaign.  But would Alliance members be willing to support a measure many consider a bad precedent that does not support a just transition?  If I-732 passes, it would not be set in stone forever.  After two years the Legislature could alter it with a majority vote (2/3rds before then).  The initiative's initial two-year $25/ton carbon charge can grow to $100/ton under the measure at 3.5% annually plus inflation. With legislative changes there could be funding for transition investments in the future.  The Legislature could also accelerate growth of the charge.  Nonetheless, supporting 732 would be a hard pill to swallow for many Alliance members, who could only consider it a last ditch to avert worse outcomes, and who did not feel included in the initial design.

Scenario #3 – The Legislature enacts 732 carbon pricing as a way to cover the one percent sales tax cut enacted by Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1336 passed in November.  The initiative orders the cut unless the Legislature puts a constitutional amendment before the voters mandating a two-thirds legislative vote for tax increases. Assuming a court challenge does not knock out 1336, a new carbon tax provides a way to preserve state revenues and avoid the amendment vote.  Denny Westneat speculated about this possibility in the Seattle Times.  There are difficulties because 732 phases in a one-percent sales tax reduction over two years, while Eyman’s initiative cuts sales taxes one percent over one year. If that could be worked out, it opens the way for the Alliance to run its own initiative.  But would the Republican State Senate have any incentive to go with this plan?  It seems unlikely. 

Scenario #4 – The Alliance files its own initiative and conducts a collaborative campaign with CarbonWA that focuses the debate on the disposition of carbon revenues.  Green transition investments or tax cuts?  Frame this as basic agreement on the need for carbon pricing while giving voters a choice on what to do with the revenues. In this case, it would be best to have the pricing side of the measures as parallel as possible.  A $25/ton carbon tax is a good place to start.  Cascadia Planet suggested this before. Could the groups come together?  Would this collaborative approach overcome fears that competing initiatives will cannibalize each other?  These are unknowns, but it seems reasonable to consider this option. 

Scenario #5 – The Alliance takes a different tack, leaves carbon pricing to 732 and approaches energy transition from an energy standard approach.  Paralleling the new Oregon initiative, which calls for coal plant shutdown and a 50% renewable energy share, a Washington initiative could ramp up the state’s renewables standard from the 15% by 2020 enacted through I-937.  If Washington reached 30% new renewables by 2030 - "30x30" - nearly 100% of the state’s electricity would effectively be wind, solar or hydroelectric. Washington could join the growing movement to 100% clean renewable energy, which Hawaii did recently when it mandated 100% by 2045. This would assure that replacement energy for coal plants including Transalta and Colstrip would not be natural gas. It would also create significant numbers of green jobs. One objection is that the measure would only cover the electrical sector while the state’s largest carbon emissions challenge is transportation.  But transportation is electrifying, and a regulatory carbon cap rulemaking that the governor has ordered the Department of Ecology to undertake will cover most transportation fuels used in the state. 

That was strengthened by a recent King County Superior Court ruling in response to a suit by youth plaintiffs.  They argued that the state is obligated to cap carbon emissions under constitutional and legislative mandates to protect natural resources.  Judge Hollis Hill agreed.  (Cascadia Planet will post on this highly significant ruling soon.)  Washington state will have a carbon cap, assuming the rulemaking stands up under the inevitable fossil fuel industry court challenge.  What it will not have, unless enacted by the Legislature or the people, is a carbon price.  This is why it is vital that the Alliance and CarbonWA find some way to harmonize their efforts, if this is possible. A price on carbon will move climate solutions forward.

We should regard it as a triumph that so many people and groups are coming to the climate table firmly committed to take action.  We should all acknowledge each other as people of good will, and seek the best possible outcomes.  We can ill afford a climate policy train wreck.  Let’s do all we possibly can to avert one.

Washington first state to price carbon by popular vote? The obstacle course

Washington state climate advocates are aiming at a political act never before achieved on this planet, enacting a state-level price on carbon pollution by popular vote. 

Carbon Washington volunteers are on the streets seeking signatures to place I-732 on the November 2016 ballot.  It would set a $25-per-ton carbon tax. The Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy is exploring a carbon-pricing measure for that ballot, likely by a cap-and-trade similar to California’s.  (See comments for update.)

So far the only U.S. electorate that has voted to tax its own carbon pollution is at a city level, that of the uber-liberal enclave of Boulder, Colorado.  Residents in 2006 voted to tax themselves an average of $21 annually, and renewed it in 2012. In 2010 Californians voted down an initiative to repeal their cap-and-trade.  But to this date, none of the many state, province or national carbon pricing systems has been enacted at the ballot box.  The path to this date has been through legislative and executive decision-making. 

Washington state would seem prime turf to set a precedent. Wildfires are scorching hundreds of square miles and forcing evacuation of whole towns.  Record drought threatens water supplies.  Salmon are dying by the hundreds of thousands in overheated streams.   Carbon-acidified waters are driving out the shellfish industry.  The state is on the climate chaos frontlines. 

Nonetheless, passage of any measure at a statewide level is an obstacle-laden proposition. A tsunami of opposition funding from the fossil fuel industry and its allies will greet any initiative.  (It would be a good time to own a TV station in one of the state’s major metros.)  It is also famously difficult to gain voter approval for measures that impose new taxes or fees, even when they are not directly affected, as the 2010 two-to-one whomping of I-1098’s income tax on upscale incomes demonstrated. State voters instead have a record of voting for tax cuts, as the successes of initiative entrepreneur Tim Eyman have shown.  (Though not so successful in recent years, Eyman is returning with another tax limiting measure this fall if it survives court challenges.)

CLIMATE FORCES DIVIDED

If these obstacles were not tough enough, a fractious politics creates additional hurdles. The Alliance and CarbonWA are in public and messy tensions with each other.  Attempting an unprecedented political act against industry opposition and voter skepticism would seem at a minimum to require unity among climate advocates.  Today climate forces are divided. This post looks at the roots of the struggle, tracks its unfolding chronology over recent months, and seeks to analyze what it means for ballot box success.   There is a lot of ground to cover, so please bear with a longer-than-usual post.

The split tracks back to the failure of the federal climate legislation campaign in 2010.  Very much an effort by environmental NGOs to bring the power of influential constituencies such as business to bear, the federal effort ended in dismal failure.  But by that point a more grassroots-oriented climate movement was starting to emerge.  Direct action against expansion of pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure was one aspect.  Another was organizing for a carbon tax by citizens skeptical of the carbon cap-and-trade system proposed in the federal bill.

In Washington economist Yoram Bauman spearheaded creation of CarbonWA, which began pushing toward a carbon tax initiative.  This set up tensions with Climate Solutions and allied groups leading federal and state legislative efforts.  Climate Solutions was pursuing what it called the West Coast Agenda, passage of cap-and-trade through Washington and Oregon statehouses as a way of kickstarting progress back to Congress at some point.  It would take a central role in forming and organizing the Alliance in early 2015 as the Washington vehicle to carry out the Agenda.  

After talking about an initiative for several years CarbonWA was urgent to move. Losing patience with a legislative process that blocked Gov. Jay Inslee’s cap-and-trade in the 2015 legislature, the group submitted I-732 as an initiative to the legislature. Group leaders say they would have pulled the initiative if the legislature had moved on the Inslee bill, even if it was not their preferred policy design. Now CarbonWA aims to return to the legislature in January with 264,000 qualified signatures to secure placement in the 2016 general election.  At this writing the campaign has garnered over 100,000, despite opposition and potential ballot measure competition from the Alliance.

“ . . . a powerful coalition that includes the state’s major green and labor groups is trying to squash the effort,” Seattle Times political reporter Jim Brunner reported in a July 26 Sunday edition story bannered across the front page, “Carbon-tax initiative divides environmentalists.” Describing CarbonWA as “scrappy, grass-roots” and “an upstart, eclectic bunch,” Brunner reported,  “I-732 backers say they’ve waited long enough for action from the political establishment and are pushing ahead.”  He quoted Bauman, “They say that there might be another measure. I feel like some of those folks have been saying that for years.”

Indeed, an Aug. 10 Seattle Times op-ed by Alliance leaders couched the ballot prospect. “Throughout the summer, the alliance will continue to explore possible climate ballot measures with the goal to file and qualify an initiative to the people in 2016,” they wrote.

Cascadia Planet broke the story about environmental group efforts against I-732 back in April.  A few weeks later tensions between the Alliance and CarbonWA appeared to ease with a joint statement, “. . . we are not currently endorsing each other’s efforts. But we have no objections to individuals or groups supporting or working with either or both groups (or making a joint endorsement). We respect each other’s efforts to build a strong movement for climate action and will stay in close contact in the months ahead as the alliance completes its research work and as Carbon Washington moves forward with its signature-gathering campaign for I-732.”

Despite that seeming accord, the rift between the groups re-emerged with a June 12 memo signed by 23 members of the the Alliance Steering Committee. It raised objections that could not be interpreted in any other way than as an effort to discourage I-732 signature gathering.  “. . . after extensive evaluation the alliance has determined we will no longer consider supporting its Initiative . . . As stated in the attached memorandum, recent polling unfortunately shows that I-732 is not winnable, and confirms that running multiple climate ballot measures in 2016 ensures across-the-board defeat.”

Pollsters reported, “just 39 percent of Washington voters back Initiative 732 when read the full and final language of the ballot question . . .The prospects for Initiative 732 look grim.” CarbonWA was presented with the results.  Bauman’s response was, “The alliance thinks the most important result from the poll they conducted last month is that initial support for the Carbon Washington proposal is under 40% (i.e., 39%); Carbon Washington thinks the most important result from that poll is that support climbs to over 60% (61% Yes, 35% No, 4% Undecided) when the proposal is explained in simple language.”

Other analysis from the pollsters raises continued questions about whether the Alliance will go ahead with its own initiative:  “Our survey explored a number of other potential ballot measure concepts, all of which started with more support than Initiative 732 – with some topping fifty and even sixty percent – though all were similarly impacted by negative messaging  . . . However, further research should help to identify an alternative ballot measure concept with sufficient initial support and durability in the face of messaging to win voter approval in 2016.”

That a ballot concept considered to be viable has not yet emerged is not due to lack of polling.  Public opinion researchers have been testing policy designs on likely voters for several years. 

In important ways the governor has already taken matters into his own hands. He issued a July 28 order for a rulemaking to impose a carbon cap by regulation, he hopes by next summer.  Based on existing state law for clean air protection, it requires no additional legislative action, though a court challenge is likely.  The Department of Ecology proceeding is geared to create a system of carbon permits that polluters could trade among themselves. Though that market may de facto set its own price, a pricing system that brings carbon revenues into state coffers will require further action. Rumors have been flying that the governor will announce his own referendum as early as September. 

COMMUNITIES OF COLOR WEIGH IN

That still leaves the problem of divided forces.  The most profound and troubling evidence of a fundamental split came 12 days after the the Alliance Steering Committee memo.  A June 24 climate justice open letter signed by leaders of eight Alliance member groups representing communities of color outright opposed I-732 on the grounds of equity and inclusiveness.  The signers represent Got Green, Puget Sound SAGE, One America, Washington Community Action Network, Asian-Pacific Islanders Coalition, El Centro de la Raza and the Latino Community Fund. 

The groups object to the way I-732 allocates carbon revenues.  The initiative is dubbed “revenue-neutral" because it recycles all carbon revenues to tax cuts and credits. The state sales tax is reduced one percent. A tax credit of up to $1,500 is funded for each of the state’s 400,000 lowest income families. The business & occupation tax on manufacturers is eliminated.  All the measures are intended to balance higher energy prices.  The theory is that if carbon revenues are recycled, people will respond to the market disincentive of higher energy costs by spending on other items. A $30/ton revenue-neutral carbon tax has appeared to reduce transportation fuel use around 10 percent in British Columbia. 

By contrast, communities of color leaders say, carbon revenues should be spent ensuring an equitable and a just transition from fossil fuels. A “Principles for Climate Justice” statement signed by the same groups last year was a clear precursor to the conflict, forecast by Cascadia Planet in a Nov. 25, 2014 post, “Climate justice in collision with revenue-neutral carbon policies?.”  

The statement read, “Racial equity must be at the center of policies that address climate change . . . Revenue . . . should be invested directly in lower-income communities, indigenous communities and communities of color so that the economic benefits outweigh the policy’s economic burdens . . . The highest priority for reinvestment must be to mitigate financial costs of implementation to communities with lower incomes. Further reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Create clean, living wage jobs that open pathways for people with lower-incomes, people of color, and local residents to enter the green industry workforce. Enable people to live where they work with access to clean transportation, an affordable place to live, and clean and secure food sources.”

The June 24 letter echoed those statements:   “This past January we helped form an inclusive statewide coalition with a mission that includes equity, the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy. Our diverse coalition includes faith, families, health, labor, business, and justice communities calling for action to reduce pollution, create green jobs, and invest in communities of color and lower incomes . . . Carbon Washington’s Initiative 732, crafted without inclusive input, fails to equitably reinvest revenue from pricing carbon pollution. It relies on a flat payout using the same regressive sales tax structure that has made our state dead last in fairness.”

To be balanced, the failed Inslee climate package supported by the Alliance and its member groups fell substantially short of the “Principles for Climate Justice,” without significant funds for green jobs or renewable energy, a minimal amount for affordable housing, and a transportation funding proposal that would have devoted far more to road maintenance than transit and other auto alternatives. It is expected, though, that a measure going to a public ballot will take a different shape than one designed to pass a legislative gauntlet.

I-732 defenders have their own equity argument. The sales tax cut would balance higher energy prices, while the currently unfunded Working Families Tax Credit would tip benefits to lower-income groups. 

Bauman maintains, “. . . the household impact of the carbon tax and the sales tax reduction offset each other: most households will pay a few hundred dollars a year more for fossil fuels and a few hundred dollars a year less for everything else." 

At the same time, the Working Families Tax Credit would reduce the unfair tax burden on the 400,000 lowest income families with children. Writes Bauman, " . . . funding the Working Families Rebate at a 25% level would provide the greatest improvement to the progressivity of the Washington State tax system since the sales tax exemption on groceries was passed at the ballot in 1977.”

The question of which policy design will bring the greatest benefits to disadvantaged communities remains in debate. Nonetheless, the considerable moral authority of communities of color has been brought to bear on the issue.  The rift is real and all the more difficult to heal because it is ideological. 

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

The issue between CarbonWA and the Alliance might be mapped as centrist versus center-left. 

CarbonWA and similar revenue-neutral advocates argue that measures which add new costs to grow the size of government will drive away centrist voters – Overcoming voters’ traditional aversion to voting new revenues will be overcome only if revenues are fully recycled back to them. The challenge is that skeptical voters might not believe they will really see the money.

The Alliance takes the position that just transition will require greater public sector efforts funded by carbon revenues, and that such programs will be needed to draw good voter turnout from low-income and people of color communities. The group also points out that low-income people without children will gain far less from the families tax credit.

Another way of drawing the distinction is less about ideology and more about makeup and organizing models.  

While the Alliance claims membership of 125 groups of all shapes and sizes, its core is composed of professional advocacy groups, labor unions and progressive businesses.  The Steering Committee is listed here. 

CarbonWA, though it has a skeletal campaign staff, is more a volunteer-driven outfit that has drawn in local community climate groups and organized additional local chapters.  It does have a board with several Washington state political veterans such as Bill Finkbeiner, former State Senate majority leader, and a heavy-hitter advisory board including a number of economists, who tend to like carbon taxes over cap-and-trade. The line-up is here.  The initiative is also endorsed by several figures from the progressive side of state politics including Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata, former Mayor Mike McGinn, and former County Executive Ron Sims.    

The obvious question is whether these differing tendencies and positions can pull together by November 2016.  Can the fractures of 2015 heal by 2016? 

Some of the answers will start to arrive in fall.  CarbonWA expects most of its signatures will be gathered by the end of October.  In a practical sense, that means it must accumulate roughly twice the number of names in the last three months of the campaign as it did in the first three months to assure enough qualified signatures.  That will be a tough haul, but the campaign has built momentum and a large army of signature gatherers. 

If I-732 fails, the question will be whether this citizen energy will flow to another initiative campaign. Signature gathering for any measure announced by the Alliance or the governor this fall will take place next year. It will have money to hire paid signature gatherers, so will have less need for volunteers.  Nonetheless, without a lot of grassroots enthusiasm, it is hard to see any ballot measure surviving the deluge of fossil fuel opposition money.  Most I-732 supporters will likely vote for any carbon pricing initiative. But will the fractiousness of this year dampen enthusiasm for deeper engagement? 

If I-732 succeeds in ballot placement, the danger is that the fractures opened up in 2015 continue through until election day 2016. The best that can be done is to state the questions.  If it is the only initiative, will the controversy this year depress enthusiasm among constituencies critical for passage?  If there are dueling initiatives, will the tone of the debate be respectful or fractious? The wisest course in that scenario would be to set aside conflicts and advocate for an all-of-the-above strategy.
  

I have thought long and hard about the CarbonWA-Alliance conflict, and confess I am of divided mind.  Personally, I lean toward the kind of investments for which the “Principles for Climate Justice” call. The title of my blog post says it, “Beyond Market Fundamentalism: The Climate War Requires Public Purpose and Investment.”  Carbon frameworks that rely purely on the market-tipping effects of carbon pricing will not alone be sufficient to achieve the rapid and dramatic carbon emissions reductions for which science calls. Scientist James Hansen, who has lined out the needed reductions scenario and is also a preeminent advocate of revenue-neutral carbon taxes, himself acknowledges, “Although a carbon fee is the sine qua non for phasing out emissions, the urgency of slowing emissions also implies other needs including widespread technical cooperation in clean energy technologies.”  (See Conclusions.) In other words, Apollo Project-scale or greater funding.

At the same time, a carbon price in itself is vital and CarbonWA’s $25/ton tax is an important first step. If I-732 were enacted, it would only be the beginning.  The need for deep carbon reductions demands further steps.  Future carbon revenues beyond the $25/ton figure could conceivably be devoted to carbon-reducing investments. The important consideration is to put a stake in the ground and give citizens familiarity with carbon pricing, whether through I-732 or an alternative measure proposed by the Alliance or the governor.  To this point the I-732 campaign has been the only game in town, has built a deep-rooted network of enthusiastic volunteers, and has provided a way to spur the climate conversation at a grassroots level, engaging well over 100,000 people on the streets by now.  That kind of engagement will be needed to pass any initiative, and CarbonWA is currently generating it.

WEIGHING THE ODDS

The ultimate test is viability at the ballot box.  The bottom line question is – Can anything pass?  Is Washington capable of enacting the first state-level carbon pricing in the world by popular vote? 

The 2006 vote on I-937 provides a parallel, and leaves a troubling message.  After many years of frustration seeking to pass a renewable electricity standard in the legislature, clean energy advocates went to the ballot box to enact a requirement for a 15% new renewable energy share in the state. Running up against utility industry charges the measure would increase electrical bills, the measure squeaked by with only 51.73%. In the case of a carbon pricing measure energy costs will indisputably increase.  That is, in fact, the point. 

Two strategies are in play to overcome this hurdle. CarbonWA seeks to bring in moderates and centrist voters with its revenue-neutral policy, and is hoping they will believe it's not a bait-and-switch.  The Alliance is seeking to unify and turn out progressive constituencies with just transition funding.  While I am philosophically more in tune with the position carbon revenues should fund energy transition, I have concerns there may be some strategic hubris in the circle-the-progessive-wagons approach.  They center on the likely angle of attack opposition forces will employ.  

It is easy to see it coming – "Seattle liberals want to impose new energy taxes on you, pushing up your gas and power bills to create yet another social program."  The targets will be suburban, rural and working class voters who already feel economically stressed, are alienated from the political establishment, and do not see benefits coming their way.  The kind of voters Tim Eyman seeks to draw. It is not a pretty political reality, but it is a political reality,  

An important proxy for this is the 2014 King County Proposition 1 vote to increase transit services.  As the map of the 2012 governor’s race results below shows, pulling a large margin in King County - the dark blue patch on the east side of Puget Sound -  will be crucial to passing anything statewide.  Even with climate impacts coming to Eastern Washington, a climate measure will still get creamed there, as well as in the Republican-leaning Southwest corner of the state.  Margins in other Puget Sound and Westside counties will be narrower, so piling up a landslide victory in King County is the key to victory. 

King County Prop 1 asked voters to approve a 0.1 percent sales tax increase and a $60 annual car tab fee for 10 years. The April 2014 vote saw Seattle vote 2-1 in favor, but the measure lost by an eight-percent margin. Ben Anderstone of Progressive Strategies Northwest put together the precinct-level map below to show just what happened.  In urban areas where transit is a more viable option - such as the core of Seattle - the measure won big. It was crushed by suburban voters who could not see much of a direct benefit to them, and did not want to pay more for car tabs. Seattle was ultimately forced back to conduct its own successful transit funding vote. 

Voters not seeing their direct interest is the danger any climate ballot measure faces.  One which adds to the overall tax burden might face a steeper climb, especially if the benefits seem to be flowing elsewhere.   Of course, we all have an interest in recovering a stable climate, and perhaps the intensification of climate impacts in Washington can put a measure over the top.  The crux will be whether voters see the benefit of increasing their energy bills in order to protect the climate. 

At this point, the best that can be said is the matter is in uncertainty, and a fractured climate movement does not improve the odds.  The hope is that whatever measure or measures make it to the 2016 ballot, the movement will have re-gained sufficient unity and voters will be sufficiently motivated by climate impacts they see happening in their state and world to vote in carbon pricing. Washington state will make history if they do. But the obstacle course on the way is steep and deeply pitted.