Will Washington voters buy into Inslee’s vision on climate policy?

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee is known in some circles as “the climate governor.” The third-term Democrat has made environmental policies the cornerstone of his political identity, first as a state lawmaker, then a member of Congress, author, governor and even as a presidential candidate.

He has championed initiatives to make power companies use renewable energy, pushed a state environmental justice law, pressed for clean fuel standards for motor fuels and signed laws to decrease the use of fossil fuels in commercial buildings. Supporters say Inslee’s climate plans as a presidential candidate in 2019 shaped the environmental policies adopted by the Biden administration and Congress in subsequent years.

But Inslee’s “proudest accomplishment” was the 2021 passage of a cap-and-trade law that aims to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 95% by 2050. It is also a major source of new revenue—the state raised more than $1.8 billion in 2023, the first year the law was in effect, from polluters buying allowances. That money will go toward a wide variety of programs including providing free transit for youth, buying zero-emission vehicles for government agencies, building bike paths, buying new electric ferries, installing electric vehicle chargers along highways, helping low-income residents pay their electric bills and restoring river habitats.

As Inslee steps aside, though, having decided not to seek reelection, voters will decide whether the law will stay in place after he leaves. A conservative group funded by hedge fund manager Brian Heywood put a potential repeal of the Climate Commitment Act on the ballot in next month’s election, claiming the law is driving up gas prices without delivering promised benefits to Washingtonians.

“Inslee’s legacy hinges on this,” said Aseem Prakash, a University of Washington political science professor and director of the Center for Environmental Politics. “If it gets repealed, then he couldn’t even persuade his own state to become a climate leader. But if it survives, he’ll emerge as a hero.”

Last month, Inslee said the cap-and-trade system was “working big time.” And he stressed the importance of keeping it on the books. “We’re trying to defeat [the repeal effort],” he said. “And I hope that we will succeed, because my state is not a state that follows climate deniers and is not a state that believes wind turbines cause cancer.”

Indeed, the 2024 election could be a clarifying moment for Washington state voters on environmental issues. The West Coast state has a long history of adopting environmental reforms—such as environmental impact rules or clean power requirements—ahead of the rest of the country.

But climate policy has played only a small role in the campaign to succeed Inslee as governor, with Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, running against Republican Dave Reichert, a former member of Congress. Meanwhile, another Heywood-backed ballot measure would block localities from banning natural gas-burning appliances.

An October poll commissioned by The Seattle Times found that 48% of respondents planned to vote no on repealing the cap-and-trade law, while 30% said they would vote yes to do away with it. The same poll found that Ferguson held a 50-34 advantage over Reichert in the gubernatorial race. (A Republican hasn’t held the Washington governor’s office in nearly 40 years.)

Issues such as homelessness, inflation and crime have received more attention than climate policy in the governor’s content, according to Prakash. But that’s common throughout the country and across the globe, he noted. Even though the percentage of people who identify climate change as a major issue continues to grow, “when you put climate change alongside other issues, it very quickly loses its significance,” he said. “For the 2024 elections, climate change barely makes the top 10. The top issues are the economy, inflation, immigration and health care.”

“People may feel committed about doing something about climate change, but they don’t know how to pay for it. And secondly, people see climate benefits as coming only in the long run, but in the short run, they have to survive. They have to pay their bills,” he said.

A Long Way to Cap and Trade

The effort to repeal the 2021 cap-and-trade law is the latest twist in a tortuous path for Inslee and other environmentalists to make polluters pay for carbon dioxide pollution.

As a member of the U.S. House, Inslee pushed a federal cap-and-trade law that passed the lower chamber in 2009 during the early days of the Obama administration but languished in the Senate. At the time, Reichert, then a Republican member of the House, voted for it. But as Republicans soured nationally on cap-and-trade or tackling climate change in other ways, environmentalists fixed their sights on the states. California lawmakers first authorized what would become the state’s cap-and-trade system in 2006, but the system didn’t roll out until 2012.

Washington state seemed poised to follow suit. Inslee won the governor’s office for the first time in 2012, but Republicans still had control of the state Senate until 2017. Different coalitions of environmentalists and other advocates tried to impose carbon taxes through ballot measures in 2016 and 2018. Both of those efforts failed.

But in April 2021, Democratic majorities in the state legislature finally approved a cap-and-trade system with even steeper carbon reduction targets than California had at the time.

Just as the program started to get off the ground, though, a Heywood-backed group called Let’s Go Washington gathered enough signatures to put it before the voters. The organization calls the initiative a “hidden gas tax” despite Inslee’s promises that it would only add “pennies” to the price of gasoline.

“The reality? When the Climate Commitment Act, also known as the CCA, took effect last year, Washington had the highest gas prices in the nation, and we suffered a huge increase in what it takes to heat and cool our homes and to cook our food,” the group said in a promotional video. “At the same time, the benefits Inslee said would come never materialized.”

The conservative group also criticized the plan for disproportionately hurting lower-income residents, because it says the prices of consumer goods have increased to absorb higher energy costs while many of the benefits like rooftop solar, EV chargers and bike lanes “go straight to the wealthy.”

But a broad array of groups is supporting efforts to keep the cap-and-trade law on the books. They say canceling the law would threaten residents’ health, make traffic worse, undercut funding for key transportation projects, and eliminate protections for the environment and farmland.

The coalition includes Amazon, Microsoft, environmental groups, transit advocates, Native American tribes, labor unions and the American Lung Association.

Even BP America, the oil giant, is supporting the existing law, in part because the cap-and-trade system gives the company free pollution permits. The law also allowed BP to bank credits early on for installing pollution-reduction measures at its oil refinery near Bellingham after the law passed.

Gregg Small, the executive director of Climate Solutions, an advocacy group in Washington state, said the measure gained widespread support in recent years because of the increased prevalence of environmental crises and the prospect of adding “green” jobs locally.

“Every year, the immediacy of the climate crisis becomes more apparent to more and more people,” he said. “It’s here before us. We have wildfires and heat domes and floods that hit a lot of other places, and they hit Washington, too. As the climate impacts are happening right here in our own state, in our own communities, that was a major game changer for the political outlook.”

But the economic impact was also crucial, he added. “A lot of businesses and labor unions saw there were a lot of good-paying jobs there, so not only should we do this for climate change, we should also do this because it’s a way to innovate in our economy,” Small said. “And Washington state has an innovation economy culture here. … It was attractive as people started to see we could really be national and global leaders in the clean energy economy, and this bill could really make a difference.”

In the governor’s race, Ferguson supports the law but says it needs to be tweaked. Reichert, his Republican opponent, wants to repeal it.

But Reichert told the Washington State Standard that climate change needs to be addressed. “Our state should be a leader in the nation on this issue. But leading shouldn’t come on the backs of the hardworking families of Washington, like those who can no longer afford to fill up their tanks because of the carbon tax policies created by unapologetic politicians,” he said. “We all endeavor to protect the future, but we need a clean energy policy that is predictable, reliable and certainly affordable.”

Neither campaign responded to requests for comment.

Is Inslee’s Legacy at Stake Too?

While Inslee’s top legislative accomplishment is on the ballot, supporters say Inslee’s legacy as a climate champion will be secure however the vote turns out.

“I believe that Gov. Inslee is the most successful climate governor in the history of our nation,” said Small. “Substantively, the state of Washington has passed a series of nation-leading climate policies over the course of the past four or five years. … It’s not just the governor who did that, but certainly the governor’s leadership was central to helping to make that happen.”

Small also credited Inslee for being an outspoken advocate on climate issues in Washington and around the globe. “I think, without a question, that his legacy is secure.”

Sam Ricketts, a longtime Inslee advisor who became a cofounder of Evergreen Action, an environmental advocacy group founded by veterans of Inslee’s presidential campaign, also credited Inslee for organizing other public officials to support climate initiatives. In Congress, he founded a sustainable energy coalition. As chair of the Democratic Governors Association, he helped the candidacies of other climate-friendly governors like Tim Walz of Minnesota, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico. And Inslee founded the U.S. Climate Alliance with Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo, who were then the governors of California and New York, respectively, Ricketts noted.

“It’s hard to overstate the legacy that he’s had in his time in public office,” Ricketts said. “The man’s impact on U.S. and global climate action has been immense.”