The people of Washington state elected to save the most ambitious price on carbon in the country. A large majority of voters, 62 percent, rejected 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, shifting to clean energy, and helping people adapt to the effects of a changing climate.
On an otherwise depressing election night for voters who consider climate change a top concern, there was an air of victory at the Seattle Convention Center on Tuesday evening, where Governor Jay Inslee and a couple hundred organizers with the campaign opposing the repeal gathered for a watch party. As news rolled 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 rescuing the state’s landmark carbon-cutting law. Inslee, the outgoing Democratic governor whose signature climate legislation was at risk, said that the results should embolden states to take action on climate change.
“I really feel it was important from a national perspective, because every state legislator can now look to Washington and say, ‘This is a winning issue,’” Inslee said in an interview with Grist. “This is something you can defend and win big on. And we won big.”
Inslee said that the effort to defeat the initiative had emphasized the concrete, local benefits of the program to voters, rather than getting into the weeds about how cap-and-trade works. “We focused on the easiest thing for people to wrap their minds and hearts around,” Inslee said, pointing to the tangible economic benefits that the repeal would take away: the funding for transportation, schools, and fighting fires.
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, blamed it for raising gas prices. The ballot measure wouldn’t have only struck down the state’s price on pollution — it would have also 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 echo coast to coast,” said Joe Fitzgibbon, a Democratic state representative who helped pass the legislation in 2021, during a speech at the convention center. Officials in states including New Jersey, Maryland, and New York have been eyeing similar policies, and they’ve been watching 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 state capitols to move.”
Kate Yoder / Grist
Cap-and-trade already exists in California, and in a more limited form among a network of states in the East, but Washington’s law is more ambitious, aiming to slash emissions nearly in 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 actually will decarbonize,” said Joe Nguyễn, a Democratic state senator who chairs the state’s Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee. A review of existing climate policies in 41 countries in August found that carbon pricing programs were the most likely of any policy to lead to large emissions cuts.
The Climate Commitment Act’s passage 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 at quarterly auctions, a way to generate money for climate solutions and at the same time incentivize businesses to reduce their emissions. The number of permits available decreases over time. The program has so far raised billions to make public transit free for youth, install energy-efficient heat pumps in homes, and reduce local air pollution, among other measures.
Across the state, almost 600 organizations joined the “No on 2117” coalition to defend the law, ultimately 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 unionized labor, the chair of the Suquamish Tribe, and a public policy manager from the tech giant Amazon. “We put together, all of us, the most extraordinary coalition in the history of this state, on any issue, ever,” said Gregg Small, executive director of the group Climate Solutions, in a speech at the convention center.
The initiative faced other headwinds. Ballots explicitly alerted voters to the fiscal costs of the repeal, despite appeals to the state Supreme Court by the Washington State Republican Party to get that language removed. In addition, Washington’s gas prices — which soared to $5, the highest in the country, in 2023 — have now come down to around $4 a gallon.
Another ballot initiative, which would complicate Washington state’s plans to get off natural gas, was too close to call on Wednesday. With ballots still left to count, 51 percent of voters approved of 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 survived the repeal, the state can move forward with plans to link its carbon market up with California 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 began releasing grants to help reduce air pollution in “overburdened” communities, but much of the work had been on hold as the state waited to see if voters would keep the law, according to David Mendoza, the director of public engagement and policy at the Nature Conservancy in Washington.
The whole repeal initiative might have been a blessing in disguise, Nguyễn said. It gave people a chance to pay attention to all the work that Washington state had done on climate change that might have otherwise been ignored. “I actually want to thank Brian Heywood and his cronies for putting this on the ballot, and just reaffirming to everybody that we care about climate change in Washington state.”
