In response to the April 26 editorial, “Inslee awaits climate win,” I think the old climate debates are increasingly irrelevant and I believe the state Legislature is technologically uninformed and ignoring the new realities.
The new realities are that most Americans accept that the climate is changing and we’re causing it; it will have major, expensive impacts on the Northwest; and the plunging costs of renewable energy are so attractive that we should be accelerating the transition. Solar, battery, and wind industries are enjoying virtuous cycles of higher volumes and lower prices, which will result in aggressive energy competition much like we see in smartphones.
We should be accelerating the superior new cost structures instead of perpetuating antiquated 19th-century fuels. Phasing in a price on carbon could accelerate the transition to renewables in Washington, help to finance the transition and do that preferentially for low-income households, level the playing field for our clean-energy companies, discourage investment in fossil fuel assets that will become stranded, and generate far more net jobs within the state.
All this can be done while reducing the social costs of health care and climate change adaptation and reducing premature deaths from fossil fuel pollution.
