Twelve years ago, I left my hometown of soggy Seattle and moved to dry Yakima, where my wife and I bought land overlooking acres of shrub steppe and orchards.
The switch from traffic jams, coffee houses, and views of water to open roads, sunshine, grassland, and owls hooting on my roof was a culture jolt, but equally so was the change in local politics. The country road to my house is festooned by neighbors with flags of fierce loyalty to their man Trump.
In Yakima, many voters distrust government out of a sense that elites have ignored their needs. The elites offer tax breaks to Tesla buyers and debt forgiveness to college graduates. That’s not an agenda for those who drive pick ups or who never went to college.
People in Yakima build things or grow crops. They drive long distances and operate farm equipment. They are the working people the Democratic Party claims to represent, but that’s not true anymore, and polls show working people have migrated to Trump. To see why, one reason would be that the most cherished policy of Gov. Jay Inslee and the state Democratic Party, the Climate Commitment Act (CCA), which purports to combat climate change. The program charges fees to oil companies, which in turn pass along those costs in the form of higher fuel prices, as much as 50 cents a gallon.
A November ballot measure Initiative 2117 seeks to abolish the CCA. I have no doubt the measure will be overwhelmingly supported in conservative Yakima County, while getting strong opposition from liberal King County.
Backers of I-2117 argue the CCA is excessive taxation. What the CCA precisely will cost individual families is disputed, though the conservative Washington Policy Center estimates the program last year cost $631 for a typical family with two cars and natural gas home heating. That’s a big hit in Yakima County, where the median household income is about $65,167, which is about half of Seattle’s median household income.
Passed in 2021, the Climate Commitment Act created one of the largest state tax increases in decades – though the increase was obscured by calling it a fee on polluters in a “cap and trade” program. The goal was simple: impose so much financial pain on users of fossil fuels that they use less and/or switch to alternative energy sources.
Normally, a new state program that imposes higher costs to fuel cars or heat homes would attract voter concern and media scrutiny, especially since similar proposals were rejected by voters in 2016 and 2018. But that’s not what happened. The new and improved CCA did not generate much controversy until gas prices soared to $5 a gallon and some taxpayers revolted.
Gov. Inslee, who initially had promised that the CCA might cause gas prices to go up by just “pennies” if anything, later blamed the surge in gas prices on oil company greed. His outrage was disingenuous because consumer pain was a CCA feature, not a bug.
If Trump supporters complain that things are rigged by elites against working people, they got plenty of evidence from the news media, state agencies, and the courts who put a collective thumb on protecting the CCA and downplaying any effects on family budgets
The Seattle Times turned much of its coverage over to its “Climate Lab” team whose salaries are funded in part by donations from climate activists. (The Times says donors have no influence over coverage.) The CCA has now raised $2 billion, but The Times has not done a single story examining how the new tax affects families. Times reporters will call the CCA “a new carbon market” where “top polluters” pay fees with little or no mention of the consumers ultimately paying.
Other CCA supporters are doing their part. Pressured by the state Attorney General’s office, Puget Sound Energy was not allowed to disclose program costs on itemized bills sent to customers. In court, CCA supporters secured favorable ballot language on Initiative 2117 that bars any mention of gas prices and refers instead to CCA revenues as “investments” in transportation, clean air, renewable energy, conservation, and emissions reduction. A one-time utility rebate of $200 to 700,000 lower-income customers was mandated by a state agency to credit the CCA and was timed with the election calendar.
Proponents of the CCA have argued falsely that killing the program would cut funding for road projects – even though CCA dollars are barred by law from going to highways. Proponents argue that the CCA will make the air cleaner, but the program lacks mechanisms to determine effectiveness.
Let’s be honest about problems with the CCA. It creates a painful regressive tax that falls disproportionately on working people, making it more costly to heat a home, buy food transported by trucks, or get to a job site – all the while creating a huge fund of money flowing in large measure to Democrat-aligned organizations. Those recipients are now a powerful coalition defending the program.
Despite an outflow of $2 billion in funds going to different groups, there has been almost zero scrutiny of how those dollars are spent and whether there is much nexus to carbon reduction. Many CCA dollars are going to community organizations to organize and lobby public officials. You can find $204,100 going to “develop collective knowledge concerning environmental racism and its relationship to food systems” or $486,529 for “workshops and demonstrations on preparing traditional foods.”
Seattle editorialists have shown little sympathy to arguments about flaws with CCA or the perversity of a tax that hurts most those who can least afford it. Some Seattle opinion writers have denounced backers of I-2117 as MAGA nut cases who only care about their pennies, not about pollution.
Inslee and his allies are out of touch with the struggles of working people who might object to tax dollars going to workshops on food preparation. Farmers in Yakima who are keenly aware of changing weather patterns that affect water supply and growing conditions might wonder why the CCA isn’t more focused directly on climate action. These same farmers never got the agriculture exemption promised by CCA.
Living in Yakima taught me that my beloved Seattle is indeed a different world. My hometown remains the engine of Northwest commerce and culture, but when politics tilts too far left, as it has, a kind of let-them-eat-cake mindset takes hold.
A climate program that seeks to save the planet but screws the little guy needs a rewrite. Recognizing that climate change is real, we need a policy that is fair, affordable, and provably effective. Perhaps our next governor would care to sell that on both sides of the Cascades.
Demonizing critics of the CCA is the sort of politics that breeds resentments that elites don’t listen and don’t care — thus those flags of defiance on my country road. Trump is a grifter who plays on grievances, but many of those grievances come from real inequities. Our country, like our state, is polarized and the consequences are dangerous. Shouldn’t we try to bridge this divide?
I don’t know enough yet to have an opinion about the CCA — so unsure how I’ll vote.
But I do know for sure that Washington would benefit from a “Dan Evans Republican” party if simply as a rational alternative and to force reconsideration of Democratic conventional thinking.
Talk about ignoring the elephant in the room. We simply have to stop burning fossil fuels. That entails costs that only grow while we dither. The CCA is regressive because the poor and middle class spend more of their incomes on necessities like transportation. No way around it. But politicizing the issue only drives delay.
Well stated, Casey. But if you think the next Governor (a Seattle liberal) or veto proof Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate will make some of your well thought out suggestions to change the CCA (which will not be scuttled in the November election), I think the bridge which needs dividing will only be more embedded after November. Particularly so when the national election moves far right in the Senate and the White House.
You could fund some nice long committee meetings for $2 billion.
Fire, ready aim. Finally, someone has the courage to call a spade and spade. One state levying a tax on refineries will not solve the climate change that is upon us. Washington’s working families paying $0.50 to $0.75 more for a gallon of gasoline will not change the trajectory of hurricanes in Florida, the number of wild fires in the west or the impacts of drought. So unfortunate that Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords — the start of a worldwide effort to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. Voting YES on 2117 would prompt a more reasonable rewrite of a law that has disproportionately impact Washingtonians who live paycheck to paycheck.