In a presentation to the Dungeness River Management Team, CarbonWA executive board member Mike Massa made the case for the I-732 revenue-neutral carbon tax and refuted the statements that the Clallam County PUD had made opposing the initiative at a previous DRMT meeting. Here are his slides in Powerpoint and PDF format.
Note the projected economic impacts:
$226 annual net benefit to a median-income Clallam County family, based on the sales tax reduction and where our power comes from.
$1500 annual benefit to low-income families from the Working Families Tax Rebate, passed by the state legislature in 2008 but never funded.
Also, a recent letter to the Peninsula Daily News describes the ways in which I-732 may advantage the operations of Port Angeles’s biggest mill, Nippon Paper.
Furthermore, an even-handed analysis of I-732 has been produced by the Sightline Institute, and their conclusions are quite positive:
- “We find I-732 a worthy policy to put Washington on a path to cutting pollution and encouraging clean energy while also helping low-income families by making Washington State taxes less regressive.”
- “I-732 would give Washington the continent’s, if not the world’s, most potent, persistent, and comprehensive incentive to move swiftly beyond dirty fossil fuels and to a carbon-free future.”
- “I-732 is revenue-neutral, to the best of anyone’s ability to forecast it… [The argument to the contrary] is a red herring… I-732 is likely to be much closer to revenue-neutral than the [Department of Revenue’s] forecast suggests… Even if the Department’s estimates are correct, I-732 will still be a rounding error… I-732 will likely have less than a 1 percent impact on state tax revenue for decades.”
- “Initiative 732 does exactly what the scientists and economists prescribe: it sets a science-based, steadily rising price on pollution. The citizens’ initiative covers most of the state’s climate pollution, makes the tax code more progressive, and is administratively elegant.”
- “I-732 would be the biggest improvement in the progressivity of Washington’s state tax system in 40 years.”
You’ve heard this stuff from us for months, but these quotes are from an independent in-depth 3-part analysis of I-732 from Sightline Institute. Go read the analysis yourself (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). And then here are four things you can do right now to get the word out and support the campaign!
- Share these quotes and articles with everyone you know via email, Facebook, Twitter, in-person, etc.
- Share them with lots of people you don’t know by writing a Letter to the Editor of your local paper.
- Get energized to spend the next 95 days participating in our history-making grassroots campaign by emailing kyle@carbonwa.org to get plugged in with the campaign by making phone calls and coming to an event and knocking on doors.
- And of course they need your donations to keep rolling until November 8. (Twenty bucks will get you a yard sign! And if your employer provides matching funds to 501(c)(3) nonprofits then you can double your impact by donating to Better World Credits; email duncan@carbonwa.org for details.)
Olympic Climate Action 