You can 'fight' climate change if you want, whatever that means, but you will lose.
Do all those brilliant scientists tell you that 732, or anything else, will reverse, or even halt, climate change?
If they are very smart we suspect not, because it won't.
Rather than fighting climate change society should learn how to adapt to it.
That would be the scientific thing to do….

2
If we "stop what we are doing" will conditions revert?
Or become static?
No.
Don't fear Evolution.
Never let them see you sweat.

It isn't fair to criticize opponents just because they happen to have views that align with anti-tax zealots. Even the Seattle Times is right sometimes.

This isn't one of those times. The initiative is a simple one that will spur development and get people to use less carbon. People adjust their lifestyle based on pricing. Sales of fuel efficient cars will go up, while gas guzzlers go down. Consumers as well as businesses both big and small will respond. You will see a lot more solar panels and heat pumps installed. Boeing gets a break, but so do a lot of other companies. In return they pay more for oil. This will get them to adjust, and make their manufacturing more energy efficient.

When it comes to the debate over climate change and our civilization's unsustainable dependence on the precious finite resource that is fossil fuels, you can't help but keep going back to that quote by Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

There's a sad irony that the opposition to I-732 from self-described environmentalists has exposed--that Upton Sinclair's quote is not only applicable to people who work in, and for, the oil and coal industries, it's also applicable to the people who work in the environmentalist movement.

You can see this by the bizarre contortions that parts of the WA environmentalist establishment have to go to to claim the mantle of Bernie Sanders of all people in their opposition to I-732, Bernie Sanders who sponsored a carbon tax bill in the U.S. Senate the likes of which, if it had been proposed by Yoram Bauman and CarbonWA, would have been no less anathema to the WA environmentalist establishment than I-732 is.

great editorial, I agree completely.

I'm with Hansen - yes on I-732!

@1 nailed it, and I-732 forgoes the only viable future revenue stream for adapting to a changing climate in favor of a tax cut in a state scrambling for revenue.

The tone of that article pushes me away from I-732, not toward it.

Quote:
After The Stranger’s official endorsement, four members of the Stranger Election Control Board made the decision to publicly disagree. (Thus aligning themselves with the conservative, anti-transit Seattle Times editorial boardon this one.)

End quote.

This is straight-up #GOPDNC tactics. The SECB made a majority decision AGAINST I-732, the publisher used veto power that hasn't been used in years to make The Stranger his/her personal mouthpiece. Aka yellow journalism. And this editorial uses that #OligarchTactic to slam those people, the majority on the SECB, just like #Shillary or the #Rump would do. (More like her, he's not that slick.)

This kind of slimy behavior makes me suspicious. I'll be reading the text of I-732 with a microscope, looking for gifts to the oligarchy.

Message for those who want to wear the label progressive: Don't behave like an oligarch shill or you probably are not progressive.

Ares_Heart @9, I can understand how I-732 foes like you don't want to engage on the substance of the issues and instead want to devolve into name-calling and accusations of unfair campaign tactics.

Oh, and it's funny that Hutch @8 should endorse the comments of a climate-change dismisser and this blog's latest resident right-wing troll. I also think we see in Hutch's comment @8 the real priority of the environmentalists who are opposing I-732. It's really not climate change; it's tapping into the state's revenue stream.

Hey, short form of the Upton Sinclair quote @5: follow the money. Follow the money.

10

Oh dear,
a "climate-change dismisser ".
Is that worse or better than a Denier?
lucky we aren't devolving into name-calling.
It's not like you don't want to engage on the substance of the issues .
We wonder how many folks would just as soon see the planet fry as have to share it with asswipes.

Ares_Heart

I agree with you. I am a strong supporter of I-732 and that part of the opinion piece also struck me as an unnecessary ad hominem attack. Please do look at the I-732 text closely. It proposes four things: lower the sales tax, fund the Working Families Tax Rebate, lower the B & O tax, and tax carbon emissions. You can calculate how this would affect you using the UW I-732 calculator: http://carbon.cs.washington.edu/

I-732 is designed to be revenue-neutral. It reduces Climate Change emissions by taxing what we don’t want (Climate Emissions) and then giving the money back to us through other tax cuts.

We will still need to do more, such as create infrastructure that gives us more alternatives to emitting carbon. The debate is in large part about whether that infrastructure should have been funded by the Carbon Tax, or if we can get there other ways. I believe we are running out of time and I-732 is a great start.

- Monica

Did not the state supreme court throw out an initiative because it tried to do too many things at once? So don't be surprised if this is challenged and thrown out. I hope that everyone who supports this measure follows it for the next ten years and makes sure the legislature does not add the seven deadly words to the spending portion: "and to support low and middle income families", right into the general fund and to welfare payments. There was an attempt at a "cap-and-trade" bill that had that exact wording in it, never passed.

We are coming out of a cold period of Earth's existence, you will find a conscience on that one, we are warming up, faster than normal, what ever normal is, but we will warm.

@9 Ares_heart. The publisher has an obligation to readers not publish information in official endorsements that are inaccurate or misleading, which is exactly what those 4 SECB members just did. I get that their dissent matters but the official endorsement is to vote Yes on I-732. What are you suspicious of exactly? The DNC or corporate lackeys coming to get you? Personally, I'm far more concerned that those 4 SECB members violated basic journalistic standards regarding ethical reporting, omission of certain information, bait-and-switch, and lying to their readers.

This initiative doesn't threaten state revenues. This has been beaten to death and for them to say that this late in the election cycle is pitifully stupid at best. Washington revenue shortfall won't ever be fixed by a tax on commodities. By the way, British Columbia's carbon tax does work. There is no detailed alternative being proposed by the "Alliance" about singing kumbaya into the sunset than effective governance. Meanwhile, the world burns. It also reads as if these environmental groups understand climate dynamics better than climatologists and tax policy better than economists. Ha!

Also, if you going to use the term 'yellow journalism', use it in the right context. This has nothing to do with the presidential election, the DNC, or misplaced perception about oligarchic takeover. Come up with a legitimate argument not to vote for the initiative, otherwise you're just wasting everyone's time reading your addle-brained crap. How's that for tone?

@1, and @8 would like us all to just give up and cry while the world burns. Or we could finally actually do something in the real, actual world, actually right now and not some undefined "later" when their undefined alternative is some indefinite level of "better."

Because trading definitely now for maybe in the future maybe is awesome.