Second shot to reduce carbon

There may yet be some hope that the Legislature can pass carbon-reduction legislation this year.

With the special session well under way and little being said publicly about budget negotiations, Democrats in the House have recrafted Gov. Jay Inslee’s carbon cap-and-trade proposal in hopes of finding some Republican support by redirecting where its revenue will go but also to by allowing industry some time to ease into the program.

The proposed substitute to House Bill 1314 would set an overall cap on carbon emissions and require the state’s largest polluters to pay for every ton of carbon released. But for the first five years of the program, oil refineries, manufacturers and others would receive rebates for what they pay in. Metal and food manufacturers, paper mills and others would get a 100 percent rebate for the first five years, with reductions in the rebate to follow. The state’s refineries would get a 75 percent rebate for that term, allowing some time before those costs would have to be passed down to the gas pump.

Where Inslee had envisioned splitting the revenue between the general fund (read that as “education”) and transportation, the substitute bill proposed by Reps. Ross Hunter, D-Medina, and Larry Springer, D-Kirkland, would direct funding to a variety of programs to encourage forestry and mill jobs, protect forestlands and habitat, supplement wildfire suppression efforts and provide a Working Families Tax Rebate. But the bulk of the revenue from the carbon tax allocates $500 million to K-12 education and another $386 million as rebates back to the industries that pay the carbon tax.

To expand on the jobs issue, the carbon tax revenue would fund a $193 million program to encourage forestland owners to sell their timber to mills in the state. While recent shipments of raw logs to Japan through the Port of Everett is a sign of a recovering industry, it would have been preferable to see those logs go to state mills, such as the Hampton mill in Darrington, which struggles to find timber for its employees to mill.

While there was merit in the governor’s proposal to use the carbon tax revenue for transportation projects, the Legislature, specifically Republicans, seem content to fund the transportation budget through an increase to the gas tax. Assuming that is a method legislators will stick with, it does free up the revenue to go elsewhere. Education, jobs and a gradual approach to the carbon tax seems an appropriate mix.

Beginning to address measures that can slow climate change remains ample justification to reduce carbon. We’ll add that it also makes sense in improving air quality and having a substantial impact on the incidence of asthma and other respiratory problems in our state.

The bill likely faces Republican opposition, even with the added sweeteners. But assuming the bill passes the House, the chairman for the Senate’s energy and environment committee has promised a hearing. It’s a start.

In sponsoring a companion bill in the Senate, Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquaim, noted the bill’s multi-tasking appeal.

“This is no longer just a climate change bill. This is a rural job creation and recreational access bill that helps reduce the state’s carbon emissions,” he said.

Correction: In an earlier version of this editorial, Rep. Larry Springer’s name was misspelled. It is now correct.

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THis is an editorial cartoon by Michael de Adder . Michael de Adder was born in Moncton, New Brunswick. He studied art at Mount Allison University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing and painting. He began his career working for The Coast, a Halifax-based alternative weekly, drawing a popular comic strip called Walterworld which lampooned the then-current mayor of Halifax, Walter Fitzgerald. This led to freelance jobs at The Chronicle-Herald and The Hill Times in Ottawa, Ontario.

 

After freelancing for a few years, de Adder landed his first full time cartooning job at the Halifax Daily News. After the Daily News folded in 2008, he became the full-time freelance cartoonist at New Brunswick Publishing. He was let go for political views expressed through his work including a cartoon depicting U.S. President Donald Trump’s border policies. He now freelances for the Halifax Chronicle Herald, the Toronto Star, Ottawa Hill Times and Counterpoint in the USA. He has over a million readers per day and is considered the most read cartoonist in Canada.

 

Michael de Adder has won numerous awards for his work, including seven Atlantic Journalism Awards plus a Gold Innovation Award for news animation in 2008. He won the Association of Editorial Cartoonists' 2002 Golden Spike Award for best editorial cartoon spiked by an editor and the Association of Canadian Cartoonists 2014 Townsend Award. The National Cartoonists Society for the Reuben Award has shortlisted him in the Editorial Cartooning category. He is a past president of the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists and spent 10 years on the board of the Cartoonists Rights Network.
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