Over mushroom omelettes at the governor’s mansion in Olympia, Washington, the state’s Democrat governor, Jay Inslee, and I talked about his support for a ballot initiative taxing carbon emissions, climate-related lawsuits and more.
Why he matters: Inslee, chair of the Democratic Governors Association, is emerging as a leading progressive politician and critic of President Trump. Excerpts of the interview are below — with some corresponding reality checks.
Inslee drew a stark contrast between those who vote for and those who vote against a state-wide ballot proposal imposing a fee — others call it a tax — on most major polluting facilities in the state as a way to address climate change.
Reality check: There’s a lot more daylight between voting no on this proposal and denying that climate change is real. Two years ago, Washingtonians voted against a similar carbon tax proposal. Inslee may now see connecting anything to Trump as an effective political ploy in the mostly blue state of Washington he represents.
Inslee is traveling next week to a big climate summit in San Francisco, though he acknowledged many countries — and even Washington state — aren’t meeting their climate goals.
Reality check: Despite increasing climate action by progressive states like California and Washington, their efforts fall short without national government action. As a global problem, any individual action by itself won’t do much, and yet collective action on a global scale may not occur without individual actions first.
Inslee expressed general support for lawsuits — including one brought by King County — suing oil companies alleging liability for climate change.
Reality check: That’s a pretty tepid response for a politician otherwise outspokenly supportive of any and all actions to address climate change.
Stay tuned for a deeper dive on the ballot initiative in an upcoming Harder Line column.
ExxonMobil is reasserting its self-imposed commitment to cut emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that’s the primary component of natural gas, as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to repeal regulations.
Why it matters: The comments, posted Tuesday by the CEO of XTO Energy, an Exxon subsidiary with large U.S. natural-gas operations, illustrate an awkward predicament facing industry under President Trump. Some of the biggest global companies are seeking to emphasize a social license to produce fossil fuels even as the Trump administration pursues aggressive regulatory rollbacks.
What’s next: The EPA is gearing up to soon issue a smaller, technical rule that environmentalists say will weaken the Obama-era regulations, as we reported a few weeks ago. A few months later, the agency plans to propose a broader draft rule that likely contains a preference for wholly rolling back direct rules on methane — instead relying on a separate air-pollution rule issued in 2012 that indirectly cuts methane emissions as it targets other air pollutants.
Bubbling beneath the battle for control of Congress during this year’s election cycle is a series of consequential energy and climate fights.
Why it matters: The midterm elections will go a long way in shaping both state-level policies and Washington’s future appetite to consider legislation in this area. Here are six electoral moves on my radar.
Climate change is just beginning to reemerge as an issue some congressional Republicans talk about publicly. If that leads to defeat for the small handful of moderate, politically vulnerable Republicans who do it, it sets back any prospect for bipartisan climate policy.
Races I’m tracking:
The political arms of environmental groups are prioritizing helping Democrats win back the House, but Curbelo’s race presents a tough call, as evidenced by the varied positions top groups are taking.
Coloradans are set to vote on a ballot initiative imposing a 2,500-foot setback, up from the current 500 feet, for most new oil and gas drilling.
Colorado, a political battleground, is America’s fifth-largest gas-producing and seventh-largest oil-producing state. Layer on top of that a growing population colliding with an increase in fracking, a controversial extraction technique for oil and gas, and it’s ripe for this controversy. Two similar efforts to get similar initiatives on the ballot in 2014 and 2016 failed.
If it passes, expect it to re-energize efforts to ban fracking in other regions of the country--and raise big issues for oil companies with big footprints in Colorado.
After voting down a carbon tax ballot initiative two years ago, Washington state voters have another chance — and the outcome will reverberate nationally.
This latest proposal is different from 2016 in a way that attracts support from environmental groups: The money earned from the tax would be distributed across environmental and clean-energy priorities, instead of mostly going to reduce sales taxes.
Oil companies are opposing the proposal, partly due to the fact it exempts some emitting sources, including a coal plant, according to a letter BP sent to state business leaders and elected officials a few weeks ago.
This ballot initiative would repeal a recent gasoline tax hike that raised the fuel tax by 12 cents a gallon, a 40% increase.
If it succeeds, it would be a big rebuke to energy taxes of any kind — and gasoline tax hikes in particular, which nearly half of all states have approved since 2013.
Conservative interests and anti-tax advocates are hoping it also rallies conservatives to get out and vote in some close House district races Democrats are hoping to flip. If that happens, it could help Republicans maintain House control and secure a tax repeal in one swoop.
Two ballot initiatives bankrolled by Tom Steyer’s NextGen America would increase the percentage of renewable electricity mandated in Arizona and Nevada. They'd amend each state’s constitution to:
These are the main energy issues Steyer's group is involved in, which last year broadened from a climate focus to a range of progressive causes.
Stay tuned for deeper dives on some of these topics in the coming weeks. What energy and climate issues are you following this election cycle? Let me know at amy@axios.com.
Editor's note: This story was corrected to say Arizona's initiative would require 50% clean-energy electricity by 2030.
