Gov. Jay Inslee badly wants a clean fuels standard in Washington.<\/p>\n
He came close nine months ago, but legislation he embraced and House Democrats approved lapsed in the Senate Transportation Committee.<\/p>\n
Inslee is trying again, with basically the same bill, confident of achieving a different result.<\/p>\n
“I think it is much more likely to pass this Legislature this year,” he said.<\/p>\n
It’s not obvious why. At least not yet.<\/p>\n
The same moderate Democrat, Sen. Steve Hobbs of Lake Stevens, is running the transportation committee. And he still views a low carbon fuel standard as a pricey and ineffective tool for reducing tailpipe emissions, the largest source of climate-damaging pollutants in Washington.<\/p>\n
Enough of Hobbs’ Democratic colleagues apparently shared this position last session to deter caucus leaders from pulling the bill out of the committee and to the Senate floor for a vote.<\/p>\n
Caucus membership has changed a bit. Gone is Guy Palumbo of Maltby, a moderate vote. In his place is Sen. Derek Stanford of Bothell, a progressive. Maybe that’s enough to swing the tide in this year’s session.<\/p>\n
We’ll likely find out. This is a top priority for Inslee.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, he drew a line in the legislative sand and branded those on the other side — regardless of political party — as deniers of climate change.<\/p>\n
“For those who say that we should not take action, I say climate inaction is just as deadly as climate denial,” he said in his State of the State Address. “This is a year for climate action.”<\/p>\n
Hobbs is not a climate denier.<\/p>\n
Hobbs seems to be more of a climate practicalist. He knows it will cost money to save the planet for future generations. He just thinks those paying should be able to reap some benefits now.<\/p>\n
To that end, he came up with Forward Washington. It’s a 10-year, $16-plus billion package of transportation improvements largely paid for with a 6-cent hike in the gas tax and new fees on carbon emissions and development. He said he’d swap cap-and-trade for the carbon fee, if it would help win support.<\/p>\n
He argues it’s the best available means at the moment for generating enough revenue to undertake major road projects, like replacing the I-5 Columbia River bridge and U.S. 2 trestle, complying with a federal court order to eliminate fish passage barriers, and curbing tailpipe emissions.<\/p>\n
It’s got critics in all caucuses, plus Inslee.<\/p>\n
Hobbs’ preference for carbon fees, which Washington voters have rejected twice, or a cap-and-trade system, which California has instituted, are influenced by a December 2018 review of California’s suite of climate policies by its nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s office.<\/p>\n
That study found “a broad consensus” among economists that pricing carbon with a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax “is the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions. In contrast, some of the major policies aimed at reducing emissions in the transportation sector — such as the low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) and financial incentives for ZEVs (zero emission vehicles) — appear to be much more costly.<\/p>\n
California’s lawmakers “might want to consider relying more heavily on cap-and-trade” to achieve its emission reduction targets, authors of the study recommend.<\/p>\n
There was a time Inslee did champion cap-and-trade and a carbon fee. But he kept getting rebuffed by the Legislature. He’s moved on and is focused on a clean fuel standard as the best available weapon against climate change.<\/p>\n
“Washingtonians deserve clean fuels,” he told the Legislature. “And I want to make sure they get them.”<\/p>\n
As of Wednesday, he had 57 days left to do it.<\/p>\n
Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623; jcornfield@herald net.com. Twitter: @dospueblos <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gov. Jay Inslee badly wants a clean fuels standard in Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":43986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-43984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43984"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43984"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=43984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}