WA's climate tax is vexing motorists, but the price is worth it - The Seattle Times

WA’s climate tax is vexing motorists, but the price is worth it | The Seattle Times

If Washington’s high gasoline prices prove to be a major election issue, this much is sure: Even one of the most liberal states in the union can’t let go of the automotive age.

As my colleague Conrad Swanson reported, Republicans are increasingly critical of the 2021 Climate Commitment Act, passed by the Democratic-controlled state Legislature and signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, who ran for president on a platform of addressing climate change.

The law taxes polluters, including oil refineries, to fund a state version of a Green New Deal. It’s more modest than the proposed national version but unlike that plan has been put into force here.

The unintended consequence has been the second-highest gasoline prices in the nation.

The law has generated $1.5 billion in its first nine months from large greenhouse-gas producers, with the money earmarked for green energy projects, such as subsidizing electric vehicles, electrifying houses and investing in other projects.

But the cost for drivers is undeniable, and achieving an all-electric fleet of vehicles will take a long time. From plumbers to real estate agents, some people need their cars for work. It might make for a potent issue at the next election.

But the cost of repeal is higher: Failing to help keep carbon in the ground. Otherwise, burning it in the atmosphere is behind human-caused climate change.

If one of the bluest of the blue states can’t pull this off, who can?

This is playing out amid a changing global energy situation.

ExxonMobil announced on Wednesday its intention to acquire Pioneer Natural Resources for $60 billion. On the surface, this looks like another depressing deal in the Oil Patch that will only add to global warming, along with the other environmental damage from fracking — Pioneer’s specialty.

But other factors are in play.

The International Energy Agency, the Paris-based intergovernmental group that provides policy recommendations, analyses and data, projects that the planet is on the edge of “the beginning of the end” of the era of fossil fuels.

The agency forecast that the consumption of oil, natural gas and coal will start to decline by 2030 because of the increasing growth of renewable energy such as solar panels and electric vehicles.

This requires the caveat that many renewables require fossil-fuel inputs for their production, such as a natural-gas power plant keeping the lights on at a factory making solar panels or wind turbines. Still, it’s a start.

One of the first columns I wrote for The Seattle Times, in 2007, warned about “peak oil,” where the world’s petroleum supplies would reach their highest output, then begin an inexorable decline. A decade later, I walked the prediction back as fracking added to supplies of petroleum — enough to burn the planet.

Now, however, Fatih Birol, head of the IEA, wrote in the Financial Times that the latest projection “shows the world is on the cusp of a historic turning point.”

Still, the “projected declines in demand we see based on today’s policy settings are nowhere near steep enough to put the world on a path to limiting global warming to 1.5C” (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels). “That will require significantly stronger and faster policy action by governments,” he wrote.

First among the policies is reaching “net zero” — a target of completely neutralizing the amount of greenhouse gases caused by human activity. The United States and European Union have targeted 2050 for net zero, China 2060 and India 2070.

It’s not fast enough.

The IEA urges investing in technologies such as clean hydrogen and carbon capture, which buries emissions underground. The latter has proved disappointing so far. Nuclear power remains highly controversial and expensive.

In the near term, oil prices will be headed higher, and not because of Washington’s Climate Commitment Act.

With the attack on Israel by Hamas and Jerusalem’s declaration of war on Hamas, the powder keg of the oil-rich Middle East is dangerously close to exploding. Oil supplies are already tight. As I write, the price of Brent crude futures, the global benchmark, rose to $87 a barrel, up 3.4%.

But climate change denial is no longer viable or moral (that’s why deniers won’t get a response if they email me).

Parts of the world will no longer be inhabitable on a planet cooked by human-caused climate change. And it won’t merely be in the developing world, but also Europe and North America. Phoenix, the fifth-most-populous city in the United States, broke heat records in a hellish July.

As for Washington, support for climate action appears strong on the surface. But only on the surface. Like most of the United States, people’s lives have been built around endless car dependency.

We will need more than electric cars, renewable energy and magical thinking about saving the planet with unproven technologies.

The United States once enjoyed the finest passenger train systems in the world but let them slip away, while we subsidized interstate highways and airports while overtaxing and over-regulating the railroads.

Now China — with more than 26,000 miles of high-speed rail — is the world’s leader. Western European cities are also connected by fast, convenient trains. All of these are healthier for the planet, emitting fewer carbon emissions.

We’re so far behind.

Locally, we need more safe, clean and reliable transit, especially rail transit. The delays in building Link light rail to connect Seattle to the Eastside are inexcusable. Cities have been too slow to speed permits for dense housing near light-rail stations.

Fix these problems and people will have options other than driving.

Otherwise, we’re in a race to avoid a planetary catastrophe and not in one that can be reached by Happy Motoring.