Alliance for Jobs & Clean Energy will go to the ballot in 2016 with initiative to cap pollution

Excit­ing news to share today: The Alliance for Jobs & Clean Ener­gy, of which NPI is a mem­ber, has announced that it will be launch­ing an ini­tia­tive to the peo­ple for 2016 to cap emis­sions of pol­lu­tants that have giv­en our plan­et an increas­ing­ly bad fever. The ini­tia­tive will appear on the Novem­ber 2016 statewide bal­lot in Washington.

Accord­ing to the Alliance, if enact­ed into law by the vot­ers of Wash­ing­ton, “the ini­tia­tive would build on the state’s recent­ly announced Clean Air Rule by enforc­ing exist­ing glob­al warm­ing pol­lu­tion reduc­tion tar­gets, charg­ing the largest emit­ters a fee for each ton of car­bon pol­lu­tion they emit. The funds will be invest­ed in accel­er­at­ing the tran­si­tion to a clean ener­gy econ­o­my and address­ing the impacts of car­bon pol­lu­tion on our air, land and people.”

“Wash­ing­ton has long been a nation­al leader on tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tion, from air­planes and soft­ware, to ener­gy effi­cien­cy and renew­able ener­gy,” said Bren­na Davis, Chair of Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness for Cli­mate Action, dur­ing an Alliance press con­fer­ence today at EnWave Seat­tle. “Today we con­tin­ue in that spir­it of inno­va­tion, resolv­ing to accel­er­ate the tran­si­tion to a low-car­bon econ­o­my in a way that sup­ports affect­ed busi­ness­es and communities.”

The Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture con­sid­ered cap and trade leg­is­la­tion pro­posed by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee this past ses­sion, but failed to make much progress due to Repub­li­cans’ unwill­ing­ness to act on pol­lu­tion account­abil­i­ty. Nei­ther cham­ber took a vote on Inslee’s leg­is­la­tion, though the Demo­c­ra­t­ic-run House gave it seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion. (The Sen­ate, which is con­trolled by Repub­li­cans, did­n’t bother.)

Today’s announce­ment is great news for our region’s pro­gres­sive move­ment. It shows a seri­ous com­mit­ment to action. It means there will be a seri­ous, cred­i­ble cam­paign next year to get our pol­lu­tion prob­lem under control.

Wash­ing­ton needs to be a leader in reduc­ing emis­sions of car­bon diox­ide, methane, and oth­er cli­mate cri­sis-caus­ing air pol­lu­tants. If Wash­ing­ton’s elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives won’t act, vot­ers should be giv­en the chance to.

NPI strong­ly sup­ports the deci­sion to go to the statewide bal­lot in 2016. We’ve been call­ing for the Alliance to launch a 2016 ini­tia­tive for months, here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate and in oth­er forums. We’re very, very pleased that the Alliance is mov­ing for­ward, and we will be ful­ly sup­port­ing its efforts to devel­op a strong, robust ini­tia­tive that does not suf­fer from the fatal flaws of Car­bon­WA’s I‑732.

How we approach this prob­lem mat­ters, as our Alliance part­ners have noted.

“Because the impacts of cli­mate change are not dis­trib­uted even­ly, it’s cru­cial that the expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge of com­mu­ni­ties on the front­lines are now part of cre­at­ing the solu­tions,” said Peter Bloch Gar­cia, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Lati­no Com­mu­ni­ty Fund. “Address­ing cli­mate change can also sup­port envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic equi­ty for com­mu­ni­ties of col­or and peo­ple with low­er incomes.”

From now until the new year, the Alliance’s ini­tia­tive pro­pos­al will be in the devel­op­ment phase. It is our hope that it will be devel­oped using an open source-style devel­op­ment mod­el, so Alliance mem­bers and inter­est­ed cit­i­zens can con­tribute to mak­ing the text as good as it can be.

When Jan­u­ary 2016 arrives, it’ll be time to file the final text with the Sec­re­tary of State, and then, soon after, there will be a kick­off event to launch the sig­na­ture dri­ve. Sig­na­tures will be due the Fri­day fol­low­ing Inde­pen­dence Day 2016. The Alliance will need to col­lect around 320,000 sig­na­tures to qual­i­fy for the ballot.