OLYMPIA, Wash. (CN) – Depending on the will of voters, Washington state could lead the nation in enacting the country’s first direct carbon fee – a move the scientists behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say is the best way to prevent global climate catastrophe.
If passed, the law would charge only “large emitters” based on carbon pollution from selling or using fossil fuels and generating or importing electricity. The fee would start at $15 per ton of carbon emissions on Jan. 1, 2020. After that, it would increase by $2 per ton each year until the state’s 2035 greenhouse gas reduction goals are met and the state appears to be on track to meet its 2050 goals.
That could add up to nearly $1 billion per year by 2023, according to state estimates. The state would be required to use that money for green energy investments or helping the citizens hardest hit by climate change.
Globally speaking, carbon pricing is nothing new. But Measure 1631 is seen as a test of the prevailing attitude in U.S. politics that says such a measure is too extreme to be enacted stateside – and a chance for voters to take a step to stop climate change that has so far been imposed in other countries only by government leaders.
According to a study released Oct. 8 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world has a little over a decade to the make major changes in energy infrastructure that would avert the worst effects of climate change.
The study’s authors say we have until 2030 to reorganize our energy systems and need to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Though that kind of quick change would be unprecedented, the authors say, it would still allow global temperatures to rise half a degree from where we are now.
But limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial levels would reduce extreme weather and sea level rise and give coral reefs a shot at survival. The Oct. 8 study argued for the importance of limiting warming to half a degree lower than the 2-degree Celcius goal set by the Paris Agreement.
It would mean immediately scrapping policies that subsidize fossil fuels and launching carbon pricing systems across the globe – a move the authors said will be a critically important part of averting disaster.
If the law passes, Washington would be the first state in the U.S. to adopt a carbon fee. That’s in part because politicians have repeatedly declared such an action a non-starter, while some still declare climate change a hoax.
But the idea is a popular one around the globe, and has been adopted in Sweden, Australia and just across the border from Washington in the Canadian province of British Columbia. There, conservative politicians instituted a carbon tax in 2008. Not only did it pass, but the law and the politicians who introduced it survived a political cycle afterward when left-leaning politicians campaigned based on their promise to “Axe the Tax.”