One of the citizen-led initiatives on the ballot this November is Initiative 2117, which would repeal Washington’s Climate Commitment Act (CCA) if passed by a simple majority vote. That act, passed in 2021, caps how much carbon can be emitted per year and requires businesses to bid for a fixed number of “allowances” — in basic terms, the state is providing permission to pollute a certain percentage of total allowed emissions. The cap, and the number of allowances sold, are set to decrease every year until Washington is carbon neutral — around 2050. This system is more commonly referred to as “cap-and-trade” or “cap-and-invest.”
Initiative 2117 would repeal the act and do away with our current cap-and-trade system, paving the way for unregulated emissions and pollution. It would also prohibit state agencies, cities or counties from implementing any carbon tax credit trading system in the future, effectively killing the current program and any future iterations.
The initiative is one of four that multimillionaire-bankrolled group Let’s Go Washington successfully got on the ballot this year as part of their effort “to make sure that people know that they still have a place in the democratic process they signed up for,” according to spokesperson Hallie Balch…