SEATTLE — While most of America shifted rightward in last week’s presidential election, Washington bucked the national trend — and doubled down on its landmark climate policy, the Climate Commitment Act.
Now Washington is positioned to act as a beacon of climate policy, not just in the United States but around the world, outgoing Gov. Jay Inslee said in an interview Monday.
Inslee is headed to Azerbaijan for this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP29, where he will tout his state’s successes with climate policy and attempt to gather momentum for a movement that will likely have few friends in the White House by early next year.
Trump’s reelection is a setback, Inslee said. But it’s not the end and now the power rests with states, like Washington, that are willing to cut emissions and pursue renewable energy on their own and with each other.
“We’re still in the hunt,” Inslee said.
The momentum was not a foregone conclusion. The Climate Commitment Act faced a serious challenge from the conservative group Let’s Go Washington, which sought to repeal the policy and campaigned on the state’s rising cost of living, blaming Inslee and the carbon market for the higher prices.
The carbon market forces the state’s top polluters to purchase allowances for every metric ton of greenhouse gasses they emit. Over the coming decades the state will ratchet down the number of allowances sold, thereby reducing emissions.
Inslee campaigned hard to preserve the policy, touting the billions it has raised for green initiatives and cautioning naysayers that rampant climate change imperils our very future. Ultimately, 62% of voters rejected that repeal effort, cementing the policy in place for the years ahead.
Trump’s forthcoming administration will amount to a lost opportunity at the federal level, Inslee said. But individual states can still move forward as they see fit.
Despite Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ decisive loss in the general election, people still voted in favor of climate initiatives in states like Louisiana, Hawaii, South Dakota, North Carolina and Texas.
Individual states maintain the power to cut greenhouse gas emissions and build renewable energy projects on their own, Inslee said. Two dozen states already belong to the U.S. Climate Alliance, which seeks to reach a future without emissions.
“We will not be stopped by Donald Trump,” Inslee said.
Washington is now free to link its market with California and Quebec’s joint carbon market. This expansion is expected to calm the prices for allowances and build momentum for other states to follow suit.
In this way, Washington can act as a beacon, not just to other states but to other countries around the world, Inslee said hours before he was to fly to Azerbaijan.
Already, New York state is considering a similar policy, Inslee said. So is Ukraine.
Inslee said his administration was able to pass major climate policies while Trump was in office the first time around, including the Clean Energy Transformation Act in 2019. The same will be true for Governor-elect Bob Ferguson’s administration, he said.
“We have control over our own destiny,” Inslee said.
