By Steve Goreham
Originally published in Master Resource.
Washington State’s Climate Commitment Act (CCA) faces the possibility of repeal this fall. Governor Jay Inslee and others claim the CCA will reduce pollution and help stop climate change. But the CCA isn’t having the slightest effect on the climate, while it is boosting the cost of living for Washington residents.
Washington’s Climate Commitment Act passed in 2021, implementing a cap and invest program designed to reduce state greenhouse gas emissions by 95% by 2050. Businesses with emissions of 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year must purchase allowances equal to their emissions and turn them in to state agencies. The act also established CO2 auctions, encouraging companies to trade allowances and reduce emissions.
But the CCA has helped to raise Washington State’s cost of living to amongst the highest in the nation. Gasoline and diesel prices now rank as the third highest behind Hawaii and California. The cost of emissions allowances to businesses drives up fuel, food, and utility prices for residents.
On January 16 of this year, the Washington Secretary of State certified Initiative 2117 for the ballot on November 5, 2024, having received more than 400,000 supporting signatures. Initiative 2117 would repeal the Climate Commitment Act and prevent the state from implementing cap and trade or cap and tax carbon trading programs. Governor Inslee is concerned that his signature climate change program may be struck down by the people.
When speaking in Spokane recently in defense of the Climate Commitment Act, Governor Inslee said, “ … families in Washington State are against pollution. They are against smoke coming into their neighborhoods where they can’t go out, their kids can’t go out and play. They’re against early death caused by pollution and they don’t want to remove our protection against pollution.”
However, the governor’s statements are wrong. The Climate Commitment Act strives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide. But carbon dioxide is an odorless, invisible gas that does not produce smoke. Nor does breathing of CO2 cause early death.
We inhale only a trace of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but continuously produce CO2 as we burn sugars in our bodies. Every time we exhale, we exhale 100 times the concentration of the CO2 that we inhaled. The governor is mistakenly talking about the effects of breathing in real pollutants such as carbon monoxide or smoke particles, which can cause people harm, and instead wrongly attributes harmful health effects to carbon dioxide.
In fact, carbon dioxide should not be called a pollutant. Along with water and oxygen, CO2 is one of the three substances essential for life. Hundreds of peer-reviewed papers show that higher levels of atmospheric CO2 help the world’s food crops grow bigger and yield more food. Carbon dioxide is one compound we can put into the environment that is great for the biosphere.
The human emissions of carbon dioxide from Washington are estimated to be about 100 million metric tons per year. World CO2 human emissions are estimated at 37,000 million metric tons per year. This means that global emissions are 370 times as large as the emissions from Washington State.
In addition, human emissions of CO2 are small compared to the CO2 naturally exhausted from oceans and the biosphere. Every day, nature puts about twenty times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as human industry and removes about the same amount. Washington emissions are less than insignificant as part Earth’s climate. The Climate Commitment Act will have a negligible effect on the climate, but if not repealed, it will continue to significantly raise fuel, food, and utility prices in Washington.
Why is it that climate policies never have a measurable goal? None of our leaders can say that a given policy will reduce temperatures by so many degrees, or reduce sea level rise by so many inches, or reduce the number of storms by a tangible amount, even if added to other policies. Fighting climate change is like raising an army and never taking a hill or building a hospital and never serving a patient. Yet more and more money must be endlessly spent to serve the ideology of Climatism.
This fall, the citizens of Washington State should reject Climatism and vote in favor of the resolution to strike down the Climate Commitment Act.
Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and the author of the bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.
If the people from Washington have any sense they will vote to get rid of it. Washington is a liberal cesspool I don’t hold out much hope but at some point even the least of us should be able to figure out all climate change policy is garbage. It is not about science or climate but rather politics, power and control. It’s a bad bad deal.
“Every day, nature puts about twenty times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as human industry and removes about the same amount.”
We can make guesses and estimates but we really have no clue about the amount of CO2 moving on a daily basis.
I’m not defending Inslee by any means, but Goreham has missed the point made. Inslee doesn’t say that CO2 creates smoke, he’s saying (completely without evidence) that CO2 creates conditions for extreme wildfires.
Goreham: “The Climate Commitment Act strives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide. But carbon dioxide is an odorless, invisible gas that does not produce smoke. Nor does breathing of CO2 cause early death.”
Inslee doesn’t say that.
Gov. Inslee “works” as much as 9.5 hours a week, including makeup sessions.
Initiative 2117 would repeal the Climate Commitment Act and prevent the state from implementing cap and trade or cap and tax carbon trading programs
“Cap and trade” and “cap and tax” and “carbon trading programs” are just devious names for TAX. It’s no more complicated than that. So how, exactly, does giving the government more money fix climate change?
The initiative presents no problem for Inslee. The Washington State Supreme Court will void the initiative because a) it deals with more than one subject (even if it doesn’t), b) it would interfere with education which is the state’s number one priority (What does this have to do with education? Doesn’t matter, the initiative’s supporters will have to prove that it doesn’t interfere) or c) because Climate Change is an existential threat, or d) just because…
The first two were actually used in the past to scuttle tax cuts. The WSSC allowed Inslee to implement an income tax even though the state’s constitution specifically prohibits an income tax. They called it a “payroll tax” and got away with it.
It’s likely that Bob Ferguson, the worst AG in the country, will be the new governor because Inslee won’t run again.
I left that miserable excuse for a state last year and am glad that I won’t have to deal with it ever again.
“Businesses with emissions of 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year must purchase allowances equal to their emissions and turn them in to state agencies.”
From whom are these allowances purchased? Bill Gates? ALGore? Ted Turner?
What did the original owners of “Allowances” do to get them to sell?
Somebody is going to get rich off this scheme and of course the Big Guy will get his cut.
It is a matter of defining CO2 as “pollution”, in a religious sense. Not halal, not kosher, taboo. As a good green is stone ignorant of science, real effects do not enter into their consideration. They want Purity!
Inslee is a man with a remarkably small brain. Reason does not work with him.
When he ran for president on this platform, he gained net zero support and dropped out before Biden even emerged from his basement.
Washington has been reduced to a joke under his “leadership”. Maybe the people are tired of his stupidity. It’s time people ask him why he hasn’t personally stopped emitting pollution.
As a resident of Washington state this article is an excellent example of why we call this buffoon #IdiotInslee. We are working hard to make sure #BozoBob Ferguson does not replace him this November as he’s been a disaster as AG for 12 years.
If we did not have Gov. Inslee, we might have to make him up.
A better target for Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals #5 (ridicule) does not exist.
And like Harris, totally unaware of the Alinsky target they present.
Can we survive this level of pollution of the political environment?
“Fighting climate change is like raising an army and never taking a hill” Just like the Grand Old Duke of York and his 10,000 men. 😉
“Removes about the same amount” is an assumption, not a fact. Stop regurgitating the “climate” talking points.
Why do you think the climate syndicate refers to CO2 as carbon?
It is intended to mislead, obviously.
The governor is mistakenly talking about the effects
Is he? Or does he make those statements knowing that they are false?
To get the full flavor of this loon, if you’ve got the stomach:
https://www.volts.wtf/p/washington-governor-jay-inslee-on
When a politician speaks, and even when they invoke the mantle of “science”, it is almost never about science, but rather about political convenience.
Governor Inslee has no clue how insignificant an impact Washington States’ “Climate Commitment Act” fantacy will have on averting warming of the planet, nor do most Washingtonians. In the real world an impressive group of high profile prominent physicists have produced a paper “Net Zero Averted Temperature Increase” illustrating just how little warming will be averted with total commitment to U.S. policy Net Zero by 2050.
Using the IPCC’s own feedback supposition, if the U.S. went to complete Net Zero by 2050 a paltry warming of 0.034 ◦C (0.061 ◦F) would be averted. Since Washington State emits 16% of U.S. CO2 emissions, our CCA contribution to avert warming by 2050 would amount to 0.005 degrees Celsius or 0.0097 degrees F. These numbers are too small to be measured with weather instrumentation.
So, paying an extra $.35-.50 cents and more as each year goes by for every gallon of gas forever and having to give up gas cars, gas furnaces, gas cook tops, and gas water heaters while being forced to buy EVs, heat pumps, electric cook tops, and electric water heaters will not do anything that can be measured in averting future climate warming. It only greatly adversely hurts Washington residents’ bottom line finances.
The idea that voters supporting the two initiatives designed to stop these “make no difference” draconian issues and this State money grab is somehow going to hurt the climate is beyond ludicrous. If the voters aren’t successful, it will only harm Washington residents financially for no discernible difference in the climate.
Check it out.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Net-Zero-Averted-Temperature-Increase-2024-06-11.pdf
The cap and invest program is nothing but a scam that gives money to far Left groups. It is all about the money.