♪♪
-It's designed to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
but this November,
voters could end the state's
landmark carbon cap-and-invest program.
-If 2117 passes, the price of gas
relative to other states will go down
because we're putting a 25 to 50 cent tax on it.
-But there's nothing in this initiative that does anything.
It doesn't reduce anything.
It only slashes the budget and increases pollution.
-That's next on Seattle University Conversations.
Now your host, Joni Balter.
[ Applause ]
-Good afternoon.
Big welcome to Seattle University's
Conversations program.
Today we present a conversational debate
on initiative 2117, appearing on the November ballot.
This measure would prohibit carbon tax credit trading and
repeal Washington's carbon cap-and-invest program.
With us today, I've got to say,
we have the best possible spokespeople for this,
Brian Haywood, sponsor of initiative 2117,
and former state senator Reuven Carlyle,
author of the Climate Commitment Act
that this initiative would undo. Seated next to me
is Seattle University senior Sophia Hampton,
double major in environmental studies and public affairs,
an interviewer with me on today's program.
We are planning a high-level discussion today,
so we're asking folks to withhold applause
until the very end.
Thank you both for being here.
Thank you, Sophia.
Brian Haywood, we're going to start with you.
You're the protagonist in this story in some ways.
Why did you file this initiative,
and why undo years of work by popularly elected lawmakers?
-I think there's two big things on this.
First of all, it was sold under false premises.
The governor came out and said, this is going to cost pennies,
might even save you money.
So the first premise was that at no cost to the consumer,
we can do this magical thing.
And then the second piece, I think,
is that it was,
and I'm sure Mr. Carlisle can speak more about it,
but it seems that it was designed in a way
that there's no accountability for the way
that the money is spent.
So already we've collected $2 billion off the backs
of commuters,
and there is no accountability built into the system
for how that money actually gets spent
and whether or not it's having the impact on reducing carbon
that the promise of the program was.
So I think it's the two things,
that it's not going to cost you anything, don't worry.
And, by the way,
we're going to do all these wonderful things
that we can't track. -Thank you.
Senator Carlisle,
why do we need this cap-and-trade program
if it is contributing to higher gas prices?
-Well, thank you so much, Sophia, and thanks, everyone,
for the opportunity to be here.
I hope the students are fired up to be here as well.
On behalf of a coalition of over 500 organizations,
from the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce
to most of the tribes of our state,
to Amazon and BP and Microsoft
and all of the labor unions of our state and state PTA,
so many organizations,
I'm really pleased to be here tonight to really talk
in a deep way about this initiative.
So the thing about Initiative 2117 is that it's designed,
it says, to lower gas prices.
The truth is there's not one word, there's not one sentence,
there's not one provision of the initiative
that actually lowers gas prices at all, in any way.
And what it does do is it eliminates a cap on pollution.
And that cap is real.
We have 110 large emitters
that emit more than 25,000 metric tons.
And so the cap on emissions is good policy,
it works, it's an evidence-based global best practice
from around the world,
and super excited to talk about all the data that that proves.
But ultimately, not only does it eliminate the cap on emissions,
but it institutes a new policy
that says the state of Washington
can't ask any polluters to contribute
toward their pollution.
And then finally, it blows a hole of $5.4 billion
into our transportation system.
And that pays for new ferries, for wildfire prevention,
for public health, for free transit for youth,
and all kinds of other investments.
So I'm really proud to be here to ask you to vote no
on Initiative 2117 on behalf of the broadest coalition
that's ever been assembled on behalf of opposition
of an initiative in the state of Washington.
-Thank you. Sticking with you,
currently, the cap and trade
program only applies to our state.
And in a global context,
Washington is contributing minimally to carbon emissions.
In the grand scheme of things,
why is such a localized effort worthwhile?
-First of all, it's a great question because, of course,
climate change affects all of us.
And I think we can all think with a deep sense of humility
about what the folks of Florida are going through right now.
And there's no question
that that hurricane was impacted by climate change
in terms of the warming of the ocean.
You know, ultimately, as a smaller state,
we have designed this legislation
from the very beginning to link with California and Quebec
and other jurisdictions.
When we combine our efforts,
we would be the fourth largest economy in the world.
So it does have an effect.
But what we have in Washington
is we have the luxury of going second.
We learned from 10 years of Quebec and California's program.
We learned from Europe,
the strongest program in the world as well.
We learned the lessons, the data, 10 years of learning.
And what we learned from that
is that a strong cap on emissions works.
It was an amazing report this summer in the journal Nature.
And they did an analysis of cap-and-invest,
and they found that it's the single
most effective climate policy in the world.
It works. The data is overwhelming.
So it matters for us to show the pathway
for provinces around the world
like Quebec and states around the country.
The state of New York and Maryland
are formally examining
whether or not to join our efforts in Washington state.
-Mr. Haywood, this initiative does several things.
I'm wondering, and in the drafting of this,
why didn't you just try to kill the new cap-and-invest program
that you find objectionable?
Your initiative, and the state senator just referred to that,
also prohibits any similar carbon trading solutions
in the near future. Did you go too far?
Do you kind of wish that you didn't include that prohibition?
-Not even for a minute.
What they found, so Mr. Carlisle talks about
how they learned things in the 10 years.
And I think one of the most important learnings
that they've applied in this state is that when you do a tax,
a regressive tax on commuters,
but you mask it as a cap and trade,
the commuter doesn't pay it directly,
they pay it indirectly.
And they don't have a choice.
What the state government's learned
is that the price of gasoline and driving behavior
is very inelastic.
And so the states can collect an enormous,
enormous amount of money before behavior actually changes.
So even this year, you call it a cap,
but really all they did is made it expensive to use it.
They didn't shut down or reduce the amount of carbon.
In future years,
as they begin to shrink those number of credits,
it doesn't mean that there'll be a reduction.
It means that the price will go up.
So this is a great way to make money.
And I think what we are focusing on
is this program is a money maker.
It's fantastic.
If that's your goal,
if the government wants to take money from citizens,
it's incredibly efficient.
But if what they're really trying to do
is fix the environment.
If there's real credible concerns about reducing carbon,
it doesn't do that and they don't measure it.
And so our objective here was take this thing down
and let's -- if it's really time sensitive,
any time we waste playing this game of grabbing money
from commuters,
but not really having something impactful
that makes a meaningful change,
we're wasting time towards something that is,
by their own standard,
is much more important than the importance they're giving to it.
-Picking up on some of that,
Reuven, Washington State has a responsibility
to ensure the public that they are paying for something
that produces results.
Without sufficient data about reduced emissions thus far,
are we almost virtue signaling by ushering
in higher gas prices for a program
that may or may not actually reduce emissions?
-Actually, there was an amazing report
in the scientific journal Science this summer
that did a meta-analysis of all of the economic studies
in the world about a cap on pollution.
And it found that they reduce emissions by about 15%.
They work.
That's a peer-reviewed, academically valid,
evidence-based proof.
Unlike 2117, which has absolutely,
unequivocally, no guarantee whatsoever
that it's going to reduce emissions.
But it will blow a hole in our transportation budget.
So ultimately, we're at a tipping point of time.
This program does work. It's 19 months old.
The data was delayed a little bit because our good friend,
the previous president of the United States,
delayed the federal data for a couple of years.
And so we're playing catch-up.
The last data that we have is 2019.
It's true.
We'll have the data from 2022 soon.
It does take a long time.
-When, actually?
-I expect, we all expect it to be soon.
But I will say that on the issue of accountability,
there's actually, in the law, it's a 90-page bill.
I acknowledge that. It's a lot of details.
And there's hundreds of pages of Washington administrative code
which implements the law.
Extremely detailed accountability and transparency
requirements that every program
that receives funding from the investments
has to prove its impact on emissions.
It's in the law. It's in the administrative code.
The program is 19 months old. It does take time.
Some of the dollars are just beginning to get out the door.
You cannot expect 110 large emitters --
let's just remind ourselves.
Ash Grove Cement, the largest emitter in the city of Seattle.
Nucor Steel.
Those are major industrial players
that are emitting millions of metric tons.
Ultimately, shifting to a lower carbon economy is possible.
And we can grow jobs, grow quality of life,
grow our economy with a lighter touch on the earth.
And that's what this program has proven.
But it does take time.
And it's moving forward. The global data is unequivocal.
The state data is right behind it.
-Mr. Haywood,
young voters are acutely aware of the high cost of living.
At the same time,
many of us are deeply concerned about the likelihood
that we will not have a livable,
let alone a financially prosperous future.
Why would young people vote for an initiative
that significantly narrows the possibility
for positive climate action?
-It doesn't do the latter.
It doesn't significantly narrow anything.
What I think we should do is they should vote yes.
If they really care about the environment,
they should vote yes on 2117,
get rid of this very flawed politician's dream grift,
and do something that's meaningful,
that actually works and can be measured.
And if I can give an example,
there's recently the Department of Ecology
did a bunch of methane capture grants.
But if you read the grant criteria,
being able to actually measure
how much methane is removed is not one of the conditions for
how they're giving out the grants.
So there's this complete -- it's pretending.
And as I listen to Mr. Kala, I hear these beautiful,
well-stated political promises
that sound like what goes on in this state.
Politicians come in.
It's not going to cost you anything.
It's going to do these magical things in the future.
2117 doesn't say it's going to,
as he said, we're making no claim
that we're going to reduce carbon with 2117.
What we're going to reduce is that student
who's paying a whole lot of money just to get back
and forth, we're going to reduce the cost to them.
He keeps saying, well,
this doesn't guarantee that it'll reduce the cost.
I promise you, and I'm willing to make a wager with you,
if 2117 passes, the price of gas
relative to other states will go down
because we're putting a 25 to 50 cent tax on it.
And the other promise I can also make you is
that if 2117 doesn't pass, he knows this is true
because he designed it that way, the price of gas will go up.
By their own calculations,
it's going to go up to over a dollar a gallon by the time
this thing is through.
It's designed for the price to go up.
So if you're a student and you're barely making it,
you should vote yes on 2117. Get rid of this.
And if you really care about the environment,
become part of the conversation of what could really work
that doesn't destroy the economy in the meantime.
-Thank you.
And as I just alluded to,
young voters tend to believe in human-caused climate change.
Do you? Yes or no?
-I think anybody that says humans don't have an impact
on the environment is a fool. -Thank you.
And with that being said, I think it's hard to deny that
we've seen an increase in the frequency and intensity
of devastating natural disasters in recent years.
Thinking about Florida right now, thinking about wildfires,
heat waves, floods, just to name a few.
If not the government,
who has a responsibility to respond to this increase
in events and their underlying cause?
-Well, Mr. Carlisle stated at the front
that these Florida hurricanes are somehow part
of global warming.
And I don't think there's any conclusive evidence
of that whatsoever.
This is just an assertion that's made to scare people.
I think that we -- you can laugh all you want,
but you can make these assertions.
It doesn't make them true.
Do we have a responsibility? The question is,
do we as individuals have a responsibility to take care of
and the stewardship of the environment?
Absolutely. On an individual level, absolutely.
We should be doing things to make a difference.
-But not the government?
-The government can, and it did in the '70s.
It had a very responsible program.
And it's unlike what's going on today.
In the '70s,
we had serious pollution problems with carbon monoxide
and with a lot of different chemicals
that were being released into the environment
that were very, very unhealthy.
And they had a cap and trade
program that actually worked
because it was a real market program.
What we've got in this state is something that says,
here's this cap and trade,
and then instead of letting the market sort of fix it,
this is a gun-to-the-head market solution.
And then we said, and then you're going to have to --
Jay Inslee said he wanted all the cars
that were bought by the state were supposed to be,
or 50% by 2021 were supposed to be EVs.
I think now it's maybe at 20%.
He hasn't been able to deliver on it,
but he's doing the mandates that aren't necessarily --
they're not workable in a way
that the market's going to function.
If we get rid of all the energy that we're talking about now,
this state has no way to function.
We don't have anything to back up.
And we're not talking about natural gas today,
but that's another one
that they've been talking about getting rid of.
If you get rid of natural gas --
and I'd be curious if Mr. Carlisle,
what he thinks about the dams.
Do you think that we should get rid of the dams
as a source of electricity?
I personally don't.
But I think if we go in this direction,
we don't have a plan in place
to deal with society that runs out of electricity and energy.
-Did you want to say something?
-Yeah.
You know, I guess I'm struck by the term grifter.
Mr. Haywood used the term grifter of the beneficiaries
of some of the investments of money.
And he said in a recent King 5 interview the other day
that our tribal elders are grifters for receiving --
well, that was my understanding of that.
-I never called the tribal elders grifter.
I never called them that.
-The tribes were grifters for --
-No, I did not call the tribes grifters.
I called Jay Inslee a grifter.
-Okay. Well, all right.
My understanding is -- I apologize.
But I do think that the question of
whether beneficiaries of the investment
of this pollution resources are grifters
is an important question.
Because the tribes are deeply invested
in using this money for salmon restoration.
We have an $8 billion obligation to clear the fish culverts
to resource salmon.
We are using Climate Commitment Act money
for a million school kids in 295 school districts
to get new heating and cooling systems,
for universities to get new heating and cooling systems.
For young people, 18 and younger,
to ride any bus, any ferry, and any train free.
That's all funded with CCA money.
And people who live in timber country in our state,
wildfire prevention.
Those dollars are all coming from this pollution source.
So the idea that the program's not accountable,
that it's not working,
and that the beneficiaries of the investment of the money
are grifters is jolting.
And I think that it's important
to realize we are a constitutional republic.
We elect people to write budgets, to study,
to pass legislation.
The people have the ultimate power
under our constitutional system, which is beautiful.
But there is something very powerful to passing legislation
and to caring about it and reading it and writing budgets.
And what we learned today
is that the appropriation process of
how to spend these dollars is 100% accountable
and it's 100% public.
Every amendment, every provision, every text,
every email -- when I was in the Senate,
my entire financial disclosure forms,
the governor's financial disclosure forms,
every legislator, every text, it's all public.
We had two years of hearings.
We had a dozen sessions of public hearings, amendments,
hundreds of people testifying.
I understand and appreciate that Mr. Haywood thinks
that our constitutional republic was tricked by one comment,
but we have a representative democracy.
And this legislation, the Environmental Defense Fund,
the premier environmental organization in the world,
called this legislation, quote,
the gold standard of climate policy, unquote.
This policy works
because it asks 110 large emitters contribute
their proportional share of their own emissions
and reinvest those dollars into more decarbonization.
-Well, so you mentioned
that you represented 500 companies and corporations
and a lot of people
that are probably getting money from this.
I represent over 460,000 individuals
who signed their name on the initiative
because they were hurting financially
because of the impact this has had on their home burden.
And I'll tell you, when I go out,
we do these gas station events
where we go out and we reduce the cost of gas
to the national average.
And we do it in part to gather attention.
But when I go there,
I get a chance to talk to people that have come up.
And there's people that say,
well, I'm not sure if I'm going to vote for your initiative,
but I'm here because I'm hurting and I need cheaper gas.
Our initiative was the third highest signature
gathering total in the entire history of the state.
And it was very easy to gather signatures.
-For this particular one? For 2117?
Or for the other one? -This one, yeah.
Yes. -Okay.
-The 2117. We had about 460,000.
That's about the third highest ever.
The natural gas was number two.
So we've got people that are hurting.
And one of the questions
I guess I would have back to Mr. Carlisle is,
if you knew, or maybe you didn't,
but if you knew that this wasn't going to just cost pennies,
you knew the cost was going to go up,
why did you let Jay Inslee sort of go out there
and promote this?
If all this discussion had been had,
it means you should have known that it was going to cost.
It wasn't going to be free, as he suggested.
Why didn't you say anything?
Why didn't you say, no, no, no, that's not true.
It's going to cost money. And if that's the case,
then let's have that honest debate with everybody.
-Well, that actually takes a question I was about to ask.
-Sorry. -No, that's fine.
So I'm going to reframe it ever so slightly.
Governor Inslee clearly did understate the cost
of gas prices under the Climate Commitment Act.
Mere pennies, he said.
This clip has been watched
by everybody everywhere a couple times.
Estimates show the actual amount is around 22, 46,
maybe 50 cents per gallon.
Would it be easier now if you or he just said,
hey, we estimated wrong,
but the program is still worth it for all of these reasons,
or something like that?
-Today, literally today,
the average gas price in Washington is $3.96.
In 2022, before the legislation was implemented,
before it was on the books, it was $5.29.
So it's $1.33 cheaper today than it was
when the program was started.
How can it be responsible in the cause
of a 50 cent to $1 gas tax? -I do want to know that.
-It makes no sense.
-It came down on its own.
It came down on its own at over $1.
-It makes no sense.
So I would also say that global crude prices,
pipeline issues, war in Ukraine, OPEC, Venezuela,
all of these issues, along with retail issues,
are the real drivers of the price of gasoline.
In Wapato, Washington,
the price of a gallon of gasoline is $3.10.
Across the street at the 76 station, it's $4.75.
It's a marketplace.
The role of the Climate Commitment Act
is not causational.
It's correlational, just like any market in the world.
That's the truth. We have a global war happening.
And there is nobody more committed
to climate action and climate impact and job
growth and quality of life
and our grandchildren's grandchildren than Jay Inslee.
And he has been a moral authority,
thought leader on the issue of climate.
And ultimately, to take one five-second clip
from one press conference versus dozens --
-But why not do what I suggested?
Why not just say, you know, got the number wrong?
-We, as a constitutional republic, did not.
We had dozens of hearings, dozens of meetings,
hundreds of people testified.
We had amendments. We have language.
We talked about this in committee.
We talked about it on the floor.
I got up on the Senate floor
and made this speech and talked about impact and benefits.
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.
-So there's squid ink all over what just happened.
Number one, he said,
prices have gone down because of this and that.
What really matters is not whether prices in the absolute
have gone down, but in the relative.
We are over a dollar higher than any other state,
and the reason for that is first,
we have a gas tax that costs about 49 cents,
and then the difference between us
and the others is anywhere from 26 to 50 cents greater
than the average.
Our cost of gas here is much higher,
and even to bordering states like Idaho and Oregon,
and you can contribute it directly
to the 49-cent direct sales gas tax, and the rest is the CCA.
So to pretend, to sort of say, oh, it's war in Ukraine,
yes, the war in Ukraine
absolutely increases the price of gas, absolutely, no doubt.
So do a bunch of other things.
But it's the differential that matters,
because our state, with huge ports,
with great access,
should not ever have been having higher gas prices than Hawaii,
that has to import all of its gas.
It matters on a relative basis, number one.
Number two, he still didn't answer the question,
and I think you asked it to him twice.
If you knew, why didn't you say it?
And his answer to me was --
-Well, I didn't actually say that.
-Well, why don't you say it now?
-From what you know now,
why not say that that was an incorrect statement?
-I'd still like to hear the answer to that.
Do you believe that it increased the cost at all,
or do you reject that it caused any increase in the price?
You say it's correlationary, not causational.
So you reject completely
that it caused any increase in the price of gas?
-I reject completely
that we have any disclosure of the difference
between the wholesale and the retail rate.
The cost of allowances from the Climate Commitment Act are
not reflected in any technically viable way at the pump.
There's no way to know
whether a supplier is charging X amount or Y amount.
Why is the price of gasoline $3.10 at a 76 station in Wapato
and $4.75 in Seattle?
And you say the issue of relative.
So relative, Washington to national,
appreciate you raising that,
the relative price has gone down 71 cents in the last few years.
It's just unbelievable. It's gone down.
So if you believe it's causational,
then the Climate Commitment Act has actually lowered.
So it's not possible to know the exact amount.
I just don't accept
that it's possible to know the exact amount.
I would note also, though,
that yesterday, Senator John Braun,
the state Republican leader of the state Senate,
fabulous, high-integrity guy,
said basically that once the 2117 passes,
then the Republicans will be proposing a gas tax.
So it seems to me
that the proponents of 2117 are not actually
against increasing gas prices.
They're actually just against
state climate action and a cap on --
-Gas taxes have other rules on them.
Can you explain that? No. You go ahead.
No, okay.
So they're limited to,
or they're used very heavily for roads and bridges, right?
-That's right.
So the question is, if 2117 goes away,
what do we do about the $5.4 billion cut to new ferries,
wildfire prevention, free transit for youth,
and all of those other investments
that are so critical?
Think about a pot.
You have a small pot, and you've got two sources of water
that fill up that pot.
Two-thirds of it comes from the gas tax,
and one-third comes from the cap-and-invest program.
If you turn off that cap-and-invest,
you get less water, and you have more dependency on gas prices,
just as cars are getting more efficient,
and there's less gas tax modeling.
Every state in the nation
and every jurisdiction in the world is looking for ways
to creatively explore
how to fund a high-quality transportation system.
The Environmental Defense Fund calls this policy
the gold standard of state climate policy
because we reinvest those dollars in the communities,
in disproportionately impacted communities,
in tribes, in low-income communities.
We are using those dollars on behalf of the public
for the public good,
and yes, we have to be thoughtful about that,
and yes, there is accountability.
There is transparency.
But the era of massive gas tax being the only source of funds
is unsustainable in the world we live in.
-So I don't support a gas tax,
and if John Braun brings a gas tax,
I may do an initiative to get rid of the gas tax, right?
This is not a Republican or Democrat issue,
so when he says the backers of it, that's absolutely not true.
Let me go back to something he said earlier,
which is the grifting thing.
I never called anybody that takes money from the state,
I don't call them grifters.
Grifters are the state employees and the --
not the state employees, let's say the titans of Olympia
who are taking the money from commuters
and then passing it out as political favors.
That's the grift.
I don't blame the tribes for taking the money.
They're smart to take the money.
I don't blame anyone that takes the $200 check
that Jay Inslee's bribing everybody with now.
Take the check and then vote yes on 2117.
That's not a grift. Inslee's the grift.
-Whoops, whoops.
I think I -- are you almost finished?
-Go ahead. Go ahead. No.
-Brian, if not this program, what?
The Seattle Times editorial page,
which opposed your initiative,
dinged you pretty badly for not having an alternative solution.
What is the alternative?
A heavy-handed regulation system?
-I think something that works.
First of all, something that works.
-Hang on a second. -So let's get together.
He says we spent two years crafting this thing.
I don't think you talked to anybody
that was going to be impacted by it.
You went out and you did this program
and you said, okay, gasoline companies,
you big fuel companies -- this is the conversation
that seems to have gone on.
If you don't play ball with us on the way
that we're going to do this, if you don't play ball,
but you can do this cap and trade,
which isn't going to cost you anything,
you can pass it on to the commuter, essentially.
So there's no cost to you.
If you do that and play ball with us,
then we don't do anything that hurts you worse.
If you don't do that,
we're going to do something much more draconian.
And so the gas companies come on board with it,
BP's on board with it.
It should make everybody in this room suspicious.
Why is BP on board with this thing?
So if we want to do something that's meaningful
and that matters,
I think that you need to get not only the 500 organizations
that are going to get money from the CCA,
I think you need to talk to the 500,000 people
who signed the initiative,
who were hurt by this every single day.
So bring that voice in.
And then let's talk about programs that work.
And there's programs that work
that aren't such a regressive tax.
-So I can understand getting a little agitated
about having 500 of the premier organizations in the state
opposed to your initiative.
-That doesn't upset me. They're all on the take.
-So the state PTA,
the Washington State Medical Association,
the editorial boards of Vancouver and Everett
and Seattle and elsewhere, the public health officials,
I'm struggling to understand why and how they're all on the take.
We are facing a challenge in this state.
And, you know, a couple of weeks ago, Dan Evans passed away.
He was 98 years old.
He was a three-term Republican governor and U.S.
senator in this state.
In 2008, he endorsed me in my campaign for state house.
I was the first Democrat he ever endorsed.
He created the Department of Ecology.
He was a leader,
a moral authority thought leader in environment and climate work.
He believed it to his core.
Mr. Haywood is a 2024 type of Republican,
not a traditional Washington State Republican.
And I think we're at a moment in time to ask ourselves,
are we going to invest in our quality of life,
in our jobs, in our future?
Are we going to invest in free transit?
Are we going to invest in wildfire prevention?
Are we going to take a moral stand for
a better quality of life?
Or are we going to step back and say,
state governments, states have no role,
our job is to do nothing?
I don't think that's what the people of Washington want.
We are facing an affordability challenge in this country
and around the world.
There's no question about that.
But there's nothing in this initiative that does anything.
It doesn't reduce anything.
It only slashes the budget and increases pollution.
And when he says there --
when she asked if there's an alternative,
his policy, the 2117, is the alternative.
It sets state law that says
that polluters cannot be asked to contribute
to their own pollution. That's all we're asking.
We're not asking those emitters to do more
than their fair share.
We're just asking them to do their fair share.
And that's what our economy is about.
That's why Amazon and Microsoft --
why is BP supporting this
and joining the broadest coalition in state history?
Because they participate in this program in Europe and California
and they know how it works.
They invested $280 million to invest in their own refinery
up in Cherry Point, the largest emitter in Washington state.
Because they know that if they do that,
they make money in the long term by decarbonizing.
-And getting money from the state.
-It's business. It's just business.
They made a decision. And to ask yourself
why the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce,
representing hundreds and hundreds of small businesses,
why is the business community, the labor community,
the environment community, the public health community, and
virtually every editorial and everyone else opposed to this?
Maybe because blowing up the cap on emissions
increases emissions, blows up our budget,
and sets in motion the wrong direction for this state.
-All right.
This question is again for Senator Carlisle.
You're no longer in the legislature,
but as we've mentioned,
there's over 400,000 signatures for this initiative.
And it's clear that many Washington voters aren't
satisfied with the Climate Commitment Act
as they understand it.
If the initiative fails and the law continues,
how should lawmakers respond to this legitimate frustration?
For example,
are there any amendments lawmakers could or should enact?
-Thank you, Sophia. That's a great question.
I think it's a spot on question.
And I guess I would remind folks
that the state of Washington has passed a law.
It is state law that we will decarbonize.
The Climate Commitment Act doesn't repeal that.
2117 doesn't repeal the state of Washington's
legal statutory obligation to decarbonize by 2050.
We've embraced the letter
and the spirit of the Paris Agreement, net zero and science.
And so that obligation continues.
We have to continue to decarbonize.
The question is whether we will continue to do that,
to grow our economy
and to decarbonize our economy in a market-based way
that the Environmental Defense Fund says is the gold standard
of state climate policy and is well-crafted,
or whether we're going to have a top-down
command-and-control regulated model.
So the question of what the legislature might do
is an open question, of course.
But I prefer market-based systems rather than
a command-and-control mandate
that those 110 large emitters have to simply decarbonize
regardless of cost.
Those studies that I cited prove
that a carbon pricing system of a cap-and-invest
is the most economically efficient,
most affordable way to decarbonize.
It works. It's proven.
So maybe there'll be amendments around the edges.
But I think there's unlikely to be an additional gas tax the way
the Republican proponents are proposing.
-All right.
Mr. Haywood, gas prices, as we've talked about,
are influenced by many factors well outside
of our state and our nation.
The average Washington gas price has hovered
above the national average for the past two years,
long before the Climate Commitment Act was passed.
Considering all this,
how do you know this initiative will result in a meaningful
and lasting decrease in prices?
-I'm not claiming it's a lasting.
What I'm claiming is that there is,
in the price of gas in Washington state
right now for the last two years,
it's been anywhere from 26 to 50 cents per gallon.
And the way that we -- again, we're playing disingenuous here.
Because this has been implemented in other places,
they know this.
They almost calculate it.
The price of gasoline is about a penny per gallon per dollar
per carbon credit.
The carbon credits in this state have traded
between about $26 per ton to $50 per ton, $60 at the top.
And our prices have correlated with that
at the pennies per gallon.
So we've been about 26 to 50 pennies per gallon.
It correlates.
And it's done this over and over in every other state.
He knows this is the case.
You won't tell everybody, even your last answer, what is this.
And you said something that was sort of squinting
that nobody in the room understood.
I don't even understand what you're talking about,
that there was some kind of correlation.
I don't know what you're even talking about with that.
You said some correlation number.
And I went, what in the world are you talking about?
The numbers are clear.
And anybody that drives a car knows
that the price has gone up.
So if you just look at economics,
if we take this burden
that we have on the carbon credits program
where these guys have to buy these credits
that they're then passing on, if that goes away,
just the supply and demand of it will force --
that price increase will disappear.
It doesn't mean suddenly our gas gets cheap.
It means that that premium
that we pay in Washington state will go away.
-Immediately?
-No, it goes through the market.
But within three months, yes, absolutely.
-There's absolutely no data to suggest that.
I would remind us that the gas price average today is $3.96.
And two years ago, it was $5.29. And all I'm saying
is that what we know is that what is absolutely guaranteed
and what we know is that if we eliminate the cap on pollution,
that the 100 largest emitters will increase pollution.
We know that it will lead to more pollution.
And then we also know that we will be prohibited
from asking any emitters or polluters
to contribute toward their own emissions.
And we also know that we will blow a $5.4 billion hole
in our transportation system.
And so that's what we know. That is assured.
Will there be a reduction in gas prices if 2117?
Absolutely no assurance. No guarantee.
We don't know.
We do know that it will do enormous damage,
which is why the broadest coalition
in Washington state history is standing against this reckless
and poorly-written initiative.
-So can you guarantee that if 2117 doesn't pass,
can you guarantee that the price of the carbon,
which is designed to go up,
these credits, fewer and fewer credits every year,
can you guarantee that the price will not go up
to like $1 a gallon, like is in your own documents
as the Senate and the House were debating this,
it was projected that it would go up to at least $1 per gallon.
So is your position that there's absolutely,
it will not go up because of this,
our cost is not going to go up?
Or can you guarantee there'll be no impact?
-I can only guarantee you one thing,
is that if you eliminate the cap on pollution,
that pollution will go up.
I can guarantee you that.
-I can guarantee you that if we get rid of this flawed,
grifting program, the price of gas will go down.
And it won't go up in future years because of this program.
-But you also didn't state what the alternative is.
What's the clear alternative? -What's the clear alternative?
-To getting rid of it.
-I think we need to sit down and do something that works.
And this is not it.
-What does that mean? -Well, what does this do?
It does programs.
Whatcom County gets this huge, huge grant,
$2 million of it goes to hiring new people.
Okay? This was supposed to be helping the salmon.
$2 million of it goes to hiring new people.
$900,000 of it goes to making good relationships with Canada.
And then a million of it was to do a study to see
how they could spend the money.
Not one single penny goes to fixing the salmon issue at all.
And there's no accountability.
He says there's rules. If you look in the bill itself,
it says that the reports have to be made.
But when I was talking with Joe Fitzgibbon
and challenging him on this thing,
his response was, yeah, it would be nice if we had a way
to track all this, but we don't. They do not have a way
to measure the results of any of the money that they're spending.
This is a huge grift.
And it sounds nice
because a politician is making all these beautiful promises.
Hey, it's not going to cost anything,
and the skies are going to be blue
and everything's going to be wonderful.
But it's all fake promises with money
that they can then go around and pay to political constituents.
-You know, I just have to respond to a couple of things.
First of all, I'm from Whatcom County.
I grew up in Bellingham.
And I will say that one of the most important elements
of our entire energy policy is our relationship with Canada
relative to our hydro, relative to our infrastructure.
And the J pod and the L pod orcas are starving to death.
They eat Chinook salmon.
The largest riverbeds for spawning Chinook salmon
are up in Whatcom County.
To say that that's a program that doesn't work is just wrong.
And secondly, on the issue of accountability,
I just have to read you chapter 173.044
of the Washington Administrative Code and the RCW.
Just to be really clear,
the law directs the state agencies to implement two rules
within their rulemaking.
One is for the emission reportings,
all of the details of the emitters.
And two is all of the beneficiaries
of the recipients of the program.
There is absolute transparency, absolute public disclosure,
and absolute accountability on this program.
It's 19 months old.
It does take time to get it operational.
And it's underway.
-So let me respond to this, if that's all right.
Because number one,
he throws things out and pretends like I said it.
I'm saying that there was this grant
that went to Whatcom County
that's a new grant
that has no money whatsoever going towards the salmon.
It's all going towards bureaucracy.
It's that kind of waste that I'm talking about.
When it comes to what you're talking about
with the accountability in the law,
it says you're supposed to do reports.
Sure.
But Jay Inslee, by law,
the Department of Ecology
is supposed to be updating our carbon data.
He threw it out. Somehow this is Trump's fault.
What?
There's not even a Trump supporter within 60 miles
of this city and of Olympia.
And the Democrat Party has been in control for 40 years.
You're saying that somehow the fact
that our own Department of Ecology
that is run by and appointed by Jay Inslee,
that somehow they, because of Trump,
are not able to put information out?
-The data you're asking for is federal EPA data.
There was a delay.
-So that's the excuse on this? If we can't track it,
we can't even get carbon data
that without getting the federal data,
then we don't have a tracking mechanism.
-We can track it. -That's my point.
-We can track it and we have it. -We're going to talk about
some of the details of the campaign so far,
because they've been pretty interesting as well.
And Sophia has a question.
-Yeah. We're going to move on.
So Senator Carlisle,
what about the matter of the $200 electricity credits
from the CCA issued to low- and moderate-income customers
by September 15th before the election?
Does the timing of this amount
to some sort of campaign misconduct?
-You know, each year the legislature meets
in the first couple of months of the year,
January through March or January through May.
Historically, without question,
programs take effect in the fall.
This is 100% consistent with every other program
that's ever been implemented.
The bill passed, they give the agency six months to implement,
and they implement in the fall.
So it's exactly on the same timeline
as every other program in state government,
regardless of whether it has anything to do with climate,
transportation, you name it.
So it's absolutely consistent with all of the timing
of the mechanics of state government.
-And so a few questions for you, Brian Haywood,
about the campaign.
You do, and you mentioned this,
spot takeovers of gas stations, gas price rollbacks.
I think you've done 18 last time I checked.
But anyway, you offer low gas prices.
You promote the initiative at the same time.
I do understand that gas buyers don't have to say, oh,
I'll have the gas, and I promise to vote for your initiative.
But still, is this also a form of election misbehavior?
-Absolutely not.
We're drawing attention to the discrepancy
between the price of gas in Washington state
and in other states.
I think it's much more shameful
when you've put a gun to people's heads,
you've taken money from them
through this course of hidden tax,
and then you go back and you say, oh, here's $200.
And in fact,
I think one of the things you didn't mention
is that recently there's been a letter that surfaced
that was from, I don't know
if it was the Department of Ecology, that was to --
-Wait, I thought we were talking about --
-Well, I think this is important
because a letter from the state to the utility companies
that said, you have to make sure, it's explicitly said,
you have to make sure this money gets spent
before the voters vote on the initiatives.
There's no way that's not tied to it.
If someone comes up and says, I hate you,
I hate everything you're doing,
you're terrible for the environment,
please give me the cheap gas, they still get the cheap gas.
-But I was asking about, is that sort of another way of --
-How so? So tell me, how is it?
-Is that another way of sort of leveraging an event like that
to not quite buy because they don't have to agree to vote,
but to encourage them to participate in this election?
-Every time someone spends money on an advertisement,
you're doing something similar to that.
Why is this something that would be, in any way, unethical?
-It got a look.
It got a look from folks,
as did the Public Disclosure Commission this week,
fined your group $20,000 with a $10,000 suspension
for part of it,
for not reporting what signature-gathering firms paid
to sub-vendors and not producing documents in a timely fashion.
You mentioned you might do other initiatives.
You do a fair amount of initiatives
so far here in the last couple years.
Do you need to up your game on our state campaign finance laws?
-Well, I would challenge --
let's go look at what the PDC did,
if you really want to get into the detail of that.
-Not too thick, but some.
-What they basically said was,
they asked us if we had any sub-vendors for the people
that were gathering signatures.
We told them no. They said, we think you do.
We said, we don't know of any,
and we've asked them and they've told us no.
That was our exchange.
Then they said,
well, we still think that there probably should be,
so we're going to fine you $10,000 on that
because there should have been.
If this is the new standard,
then every single campaign in the entire state
should be looking through their rear window
because I'm going to file complaints.
Every single campaign in the state,
if the new standard is that the PDC of its own volition
has a feeling that there might be something,
if that's the new standard,
then every single campaign in the state owes $10,000 or more.
We did not do anything wrong.
What the other thing that they said,
if you look very closely --
-They fined you. They thought that you did.
-If you look at what they said,
there's no misaccounting of any of the money whatsoever.
We kept correct books and records.
There's no discrepancy or no dispute whatsoever
that we filed everything as we were supposed to.
This one thing is they're saying,
you didn't tell us who your sub-vendors were
and we don't know. That's the standard.
If that's the standard
that even though we don't know who sub-vendors are,
we're going to get fined $10,000,
then every single campaign in the state
is subject to this new law
that was created just to go after Let's Go Washington.
It was created on the spot.
It was regulatory creation on the spot.
-That's how you view it.
-No, look at it. Look at the law.
-Folks, we're getting a little tighter on time.
You can add something here,
but then we're going to go on to just our
very few last questions.
-Yeah, so Senator Carlisle,
farmers were supposed to be protected
from higher fuel prices associated with the CCA,
but the implementation of that has faced some criticism.
How is this being fixed or addressed?
-The exemption for farmers was a little clunky.
It took a few months to get it right.
And the legislature put a $30 million appropriation
into a fund to backfill farmers who are inadvertently charged.
As a general rule in politics, of course,
in Washington State and around the country,
most farmers don't pay most taxes.
We're very comfortable with the structural rulings of
how the taxation works within the agriculture community.
In this case, there was a glitch.
It took a few months to get it figured out.
And the legislature has backfilled those dollars
and the investment of those monies to make sure
that small farmers who are driving on the farm
and off the farm, there was clarity on that.
It's fully underway.
And actually, credit to the agriculture community,
the farmers have been active in participating
in the technical analysis of how to get that right.
And I think the legislature did a good job
in funding that program.
And I think they've got that overwhelmingly ironed out.
-I think if you went over to Eastern Washington
and actually talked to farmers,
you'll find a very different story.
They're mad. It's a pain in the butt.
They have to do super --
they have to jump through a bunch of hurdles.
They have to do a whole bunch of new extra paperwork to do this.
You can say there was a fix and then it's working smoothly.
It didn't take two months.
It didn't happen until very recently
that there's even beginning to be something there.
Farmers are not happy with this
and they were promised --
first we were told
that there wasn't going to be an impact anyway.
Then even though we told --
I think this spots the lie of this whole issue.
There's not going to be any impact.
There's no correlation. There's no impact.
But farmers, we're going to carve out for you
so you don't have to pay anything with this impact
that doesn't exist.
Which is it?
Either there's no impact or we don't need something
for the farmers to exempt them from this.
I think he speaks his own lie there.
-This is for either of you.
Voters rejected earlier carbon taxes and fees in 2016 and 2018.
Why do either of you
think voters feel more strongly one way
or the other on this measure? Because it works backwards?
In other words, you vote no to keep the climate program.
Other than that, what has changed?
-So we have the broadest, deepest,
most extensive coalition in state history
asking for a no vote on 2117.
And I think it's incredibly impactful.
Why? The reason is that it's good,
responsible public policy the way we have it.
And the alternative proposed by 2117
is to blow up the cap on emissions
and prohibit any kind of future-related policy
and to blow a hole in our budget across the board.
So that broad coalition is fundamentally different
than those previous efforts.
And I think we have entered a new era
of people wanting thoughtful, reflective policies.
This policy was well-vetted.
It's thoughtful. No policy is perfect.
No one's defending every aspect of every policy
by any stretch of the imagination.
But you know, there's something magical
about this constitutional republic.
This system works.
Our country, we're better than this as a nation.
And we are on the right path when we work together.
And that's what this coalition is asking you to do,
is to vote no and to move forward,
to move our state forward and to move our country forward.
-All right.
We're going to have to wrap up soon,
but I just have a question.
You know, as a student,
my econ professor and I were talking about
how from an economic standpoint
when fossil fuels are cheaper than the alternative
and regardless of negative externalities like pollution,
industry doesn't have an incentive
to move to clean energy.
How do you see a multi-sector transition
to clean energy playing out without government intervention?
-Well, so one, there's a presumption in there
that we must get rid of fossil fuels.
And I think that there's --
this is a whole other debate for a longer conversation --
but I was just out in Eastern Washington.
I met with some tractors and I went to a tractor dealership.
They had this big, huge, called a quad track.
It's an enormous tractor.
And what's happened is the technology for that tractor,
for that, it's a diesel tractor,
but the technology for it actually,
they've got so many,
they've developed so many filters and ways
of managing the exhaust that the exhaust coming out
is cleaner than the air coming in.
Now that's sort of amazing.
That was the market at work doing technology
to correct something.
Coal plants in many places have been so reformed
that the emissions are really negligible.
Clean coal is something that's real.
And there's something called clean diesel as well.
And I think if you say,
well, let's get rid of all these things --
if fossil fuels are a hundred percent bad
and there's no good in them,
that tells me that we're not having an honest conversation.
Go to any country that has lack of fossil fuels
and you'll see the greatest pollution in the entire world.
Fossil fuels help clean things.
They help heat. They replace much dirtier fuels.
In India, places where they're burning buffalo chips,
essentially, in the rural villages,
your emissions are much, much heavier than you are
when you begin to get efficient things
that are done with fossil fuels.
And so I think the answer is going to lie in a reasonable,
rational policy that's not driven by ideology.
There's this ideology that they're all bad
and there can be no good in them.
There will be a phase out.
And we don't even know where hydrogen, for example,
hydrogen fuel is a fairly clean energy source
that's not fully developed yet.
It could do things that we don't even know.
And we haven't messed around with, you know,
Microsoft spending a lot of money
looking now at nuclear reactors as a way
to sort of deal with all the energy costs of AI.
There's going to be a bunch of different solutions.
If we basically say this one class is all bad
and we get rid of it prematurely before we have something
to replace it, I think society gets hit.
And we have things like this sort of ill-thought-out
climate hit,
climate grift that takes a --
he says we're asking polluters to pay money.
No, we're not.
We're asking everyday people that are driving to get to work,
we're asking them to pay anywhere
from $200 to $800 extra a year on their gas tank.
And then we're paying more at the grocery store
because all those foods get taken on trucks
that are having to pay more in gas.
And then Puget Sound Energy,
we haven't even got to them yet,
who dramatically raised their prices of energy.
And when they were going to reveal it to the customer,
the attorney general said, no, no,
you can't mention that it was the CCA
that caused your fuel prices to go up.
-Thirty seconds. -Thirty seconds.
Washington State just won a $1 billion federal grant
from the federal government for hydrogen.
That was another piece of my legislation,
and we won it with state matching dollars
from the Climate Commitment Act.
So $20 million investment just delivered a billion dollars
of federal money.
We also have $20,
$30 million going into nuclear development
in Eastern Washington, also funded by this legislation.
So thank you for your compliment to our legislation.
-That's all we have time for.
I am so grateful to Brian Haywood and Reuven Carlisle and
Sophia Hampton for this really in-depth conversation.
And I want to thank all of you for watching.
[ Applause ]
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