Mark Trahant and Stewart Huntington
ICT
Climate change is literally on the ballot in Washington state.
Two years ago legislators in the state of Washington passed the Climate Commitment Act, a cap-and-invest system that charges oil refiners and utilities a fee for every metric ton of pollution. The investment part of the law is a $1.3 billion fund for community climate projects, including 10 percent directed toward tribal nations.
Some called the program innovative. Others dismissed it as a sneaky tax on consumers for gas and other fossil fuels.
This November voters will have their say. Ballot Measure 2117 would repeal the climate law.
Since its enactment in 2021, the Climate Commitment Act has raised a lot of revenue, some $1.3 billion directly from companies who pay at a quarterly auction based on meeting, or exceeding, air pollution targets.
And those targets will go down over time, increasing the cost that energy companies pay unless their emissions are further reduced. The state’s Department of Ecology tracks how much carbon is released into the atmosphere. The state’s goal is to limit carbon emissions to 5 percent of 1990 levels by 2050.
The amount of money coming into state coffers from these auctions has been a surprise, opening up significant investments in new Electric Vehicle charging stations, money to convert heavy trucks and boats to electric power, and improving home heating systems for moderate and low-income families. The fund also pays for a transit pass for every young person in the state.
“So here in Washington, our state and a lot of environmental leaders, conservation leaders and organizations have been working to put a price on carbon for almost for a decade now in various forms and initiatives,” said Zachary Pullin, Chippewa Cree, communications director for Washington Conservation Action, a non-profit environmental advocacy organization.
He said there have been a lot of lessons learned, including putting environmental justice at the center.
“It meant working with tribes. It meant working with overburdened and underserved communities,” he said. “And so we brought all this together, this perfect recipe.”
Pullin said the recipe’s goal is to reduce carbon emissions by 95 percent over time and to invest in communities.
However, critics of Washington’s Climate Commitment Act say the law costs too much – especially at the gas pump. Washington has the third highest gas prices in the country, according to the American Automobile Association.
Rep. Mary Dye, a Republican from rural Eastern Washington, says there are other environmental projects that should be a higher priority, such as forest health or water quality.
And she said the law causes too much pain for consumers. But if Measure 2117 repeals the current law, people will “go back to the drawing board and think of policies that will benefit people without destroying opportunities for themselves, their children and their children’s children. And I think that’s where we diverge.”
She also argues that the federal government, not the state, should come up with a climate policy because it makes states unequal.
However supporters of Washington’s climate law said the state had to act because of the inability of Congress to reach consensus. Twenty-four states, and the District of Columbia, have enacted emission reduction targets and 11 of those states have some form of a cap and investment initiative.
Washington’s Climate Commitment Act is raising millions of dollars for tribal community projects, ranging from new clean energy to the modernization of schools and other buildings.
The Nisqually Tribe has converted its elders’ center into solar and is now looking at the prospect of a tribal microgrid.
The Nooksack Tribe is studying a geothermal energy project.
And the Yakama Nation is leveraging the state’s funds plus a federal Department of Energy grant that will build a $50 million plus solar and micro hydropower project using open-air irrigation canals. This is a project that adds to the energy grid and boosts the water supply.
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There is even “land back” as an investment.
The Washington Legislature last month appropriated $25 million so that the Quinault Indian Nation could purchase 10,000 acres of old growth timber, the last such stand in that nation’s homelands. The land will be used for carbon sequestration, basically using the forest land as a “sink” to reduce the carbon that goes into the atmosphere.
Fawn Sharp, vice president of the Quinault Indian Nation, said that land back fits with the vision of her elders and past leaders who said, “how are you going to manage land if you don’t have the ownership?” In this case the Quinault forest lands are old growth and will act as a carbon sink, reducing the impact of carbon in the atmosphere.
But there is an asterisk in the state’s funding. If Measure 2117 is enacted, these climate-related initiatives will disappear.
On the Quinault Nation tribal citizens take the long view. Taholah is a community where the impact of climate change is now. The village is planning a move to higher ground away from rising seas and floods from storm surges.
“There’s an entire world of opportunity where others fail to lead, fail to act, fail to respond to traditional and ancient values that are proven through centuries as others are collapsing around us,” Sharp said. “We’re rising. And I see that so clearly that when the entire economic system is recalibrated to be based on the intangibles that we’ve always known to be true, that in giving, you know, giving tribal nations the opportunity to advance our vision, the way we see it being fueled by just a wide range of resources, as as other systems crumble and fail.”
And tribal nations are the answer to that systemic recalibration. “To truly move the paradigm forward and shift our ways of thinking and acting in the face of climate change,” said Tyson Johnston, executive director of the Quinault Indian Nation’s self-governance program. “It’s going to happen best when tribes have the most authority, autonomy and self-governance over those decisions and affairs.”
Mark Trahant, Shoshone-Bannock, is editor-at-large for Indian Country Today. Trahant is based in Phoenix.
Stewart Huntington is a producer for the ICT Newscast based in Colorado.
This story was produced as part of a partnership between ICT and the PBS NewsHour to cover how climate change is affecting Indigenous communities, funded with a major grant from the National Science Foundation.