Seattle

I didn't see a paywall, but here you go:

With less than a month to go before voters decide the fate of Washington’s carbon market, its architect shared a bottle of Sanpellegrino and a heated debate stage Thursday night with the champion of the effort to repeal it.

The debate and question-and-answer session at Seattle University covered familiar ground, echoing past arguments made about the policy’s effect on climate change and gas prices. Taking the stage were former state Sen. Reuven Carlyle, a Democrat who helped write the legislation creating the carbon market, the Climate Commitment Act, and Brian Heywood, the driver of a ballot initiative to repeal the cap-and-invest system.

Heywood’s group, Let’s Go Washington, collected hundreds of thousands of signatures last year to get the repeal initiative before lawmakers, who declined to take up the initiative, sending it to Washington voters.

Heywood lambasted the policy’s impact on gas prices Thursday night and asserted that the cap-and-trade program, which raises money from carbon auctions that is then used to fund environmental projects, amounted to a “grift.”

Carlyle defended the policy that he ushered through the Legislature in 2021 as a necessary action to force the state’s biggest polluters to pay their “fair share” amid worsening climate change.

Several times he mentioned that the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund labeled the law “the gold standard” for climate policy.

“It’s a gold standard for raising money off the backs of commuters,” Heywood quipped.

Heywood worked to keep his focus on the economic side of the issue, but moderators and questions from the audience turned him back repeatedly to the issue of human-caused climate change.

At first he hedged, saying anyone who doesn’t believe that humans have “an impact” on the environment is “a fool.” But Heywood later said there is no conclusive evidence that the warming atmosphere added any momentum to hurricanes. And he challenged the idea that people must eliminate, or cut back, on the use of fossil fuels.

Carlyle deflected accusations that the policy bumped up gas prices across the state, arguing those increases are more correlation than causation. He bristled at the widely publicized moment in which Gov. Jay Inslee predicted the impact would amount to pennies more per gallon.

“It’s just not true that 8 million people, one of the smartest, most educated states in the country, were hoodwinked by one five-second clip,” Carlyle said.

At the same time, officials with the Oil Price Information Service, political scientists and other analysts across the state acknowledge that oil and gas companies are passing on at least some of their added costs to consumers. In September, the policy was responsible for perhaps an extra 26 cents per gallon, one estimate showed.

Still, Carlyle said, the average price of gas in Washington in mid-October was about $3.96 a gallon and two years ago — before the state launched the carbon markets — it was closer to $5.20.

Scientists across the world broadly agree that the brunt of climate change is caused by people burning fossil fuels like gas, oil and coal. Global warming also contributes to more extreme weather, like the record hot waters in the Gulf of Mexico, adding to the size and speed of Hurricane Milton, which has ravaged Florida.

Initiative 2117 would not only repeal the legislation creating Washington’s carbon market, it would also bar state agencies from imposing any kind of carbon tax credit trading.

The battle over the initiative is one of the most expensive state-level races this election cycle, during which a trio of other ballot measures also await voters’ choices. Heywood is up against an opposition campaign, No on 2117, that has raised nearly $15 million to fight the repeal effort.

The Climate Commitment Act launched Washington’s carbon market last year, requiring the state’s top polluters to pay for their emissions by buying allowances at quarterly auctions. Immediately, the process sparked controversy across the state.

Early auctions saw such high allowance prices that the surge triggered multiple emergency auctions meant to act as a relief valve, but the fervor has since died down.

So far the auctions have raised more than $2 billion, which must be spent on green initiatives like rebates for heat pumps or electric vehicles, new charging stations and assistance for home insulation or utility payments.

Critics of the Climate Commitment Act often note that the policy has not yet reduced Washington’s greenhouse gas emissions. But the policy was also not designed to work this quickly. Over time, state officials will ratchet down the number of allowances sold, thereby reducing emissions.

The push and pull surrounding the policy, high prices and inflation across the country added momentum to the repeal effort, which might seem familiar to people in Washington. Voters shot down a carbon tax here in 2016 and a subsequent “carbon fee” proposal in 2018.

Should voters approve 2117 and repeal the Climate Commitment Act, the state’s carbon markets would shut down, ending a substantial fundraising mechanism for the years ahead. But Washington would still be bound by the Clean Energy Transformation Act, which requires the state to use an emissions-free energy supply by 2045.