The down-ballot climate fight that could have continental resonance

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Oct 29, 2024 View in browser   By Jordan Wolman THE BIG IDEA Gov. Gavin Newsom is getting involved in a climate fight in Washington state. | Courtesy of No on 2117 POLITICAL CLIMATE — People who want to get a sense of where the U.S. electorate stands on climate issues might want to look west and way down-ballot next week. Washington state voters will be deciding whether to keep or scrap their most aggressive climate policy via a ballot measure sponsored by conservative hedge fund manager Brian Heywood. Officials who preside over or are considering starting similar carbon pricing programs are holding their breath for how voters in a progressive state will respond to the backlash. Democrats are sensing a broader opportunity to take ambitious climate policies directly to the voters and win, offering a runway to go further — but defeat could have consequences just as far-reaching in the opposite direction, your host reports. "This initiative has national ramifications because people will be watching the result," outgoing Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in an interview. "When you test something, the result is important." Washington’s program, which forces polluting companies to pay for emissions or reduce pollution to stay under a cap, has raised $2 billion to pay for climate-friendly projects since it started in 2023. The ballot measure would repeal the program, ban the state from ever enacting a similar one and pull back the landmark climate law that authorized it, which aims to cut emissions by 95 percent by 2050. But it’s not just about the Evergreen State. If Washington's program survives, it could become a linchpin in a mushrooming North American carbon-pricing network. New York is working on its own “cap and invest” program and mulling lower price ceilings partly due to the same concerns around affordability that are fueling Washington's revolt. Canada’s program is under similar conservative pressures. Maryland and Pennsylvania are also looking to stand up their own programs. Officials in California, which has a decade-old carbon pricing scheme, are fighting to save the Washington program and are already in talks with regulators there about adding the state to its linked market with Quebec. Gov. Gavin Newsom joined Inslee at a rally to defeat the ballot measure last week. Successful defense in the deep-blue state is no sure thing: Washington voters have rejected carbon-pricing programs twice before, although never when one has already been in effect. “It's fair to say that anyone remotely interested in decarbonization at a large scale has to watch the results of this election,” said Reuven Carlyle, a former Washington state lawmaker who was the lead author of the 2021 law that established its program. Heywood contends the program has fueled higher-than-projected gas price spikes, a charge the Inslee administration rejects — and thinks momentum is on his side. “You don't bring Jane Fonda and Gavin Newsom in to convert people in the middle,” said Heywood, referencing star power including Fonda’s attendance at a rally earlier this month and Bill Nye, “the science guy,” appearing in an ad . “You bring them in to shore up your left flank. And that suggests to me that they're in trouble. They're worried that they're going to lose their own people.” But the “no” campaign has dwarfed the $7 million Heywood poured into the four ballot measures he’s sponsoring this cycle. It’s raised $16 million from a coalition that includes Microsoft, its co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer, as well as the Nature Conservancy and Salesforce. Even oil giant BP put up $1 million to fight Heywood’s initiative. The measure is losing by a 52-35 margin, according to the “no” campaign’s internal polling shared first with POLITICO. And Sheri Call, Washington Trucking Associations president and CEO, said she supports the initiative to rescind the program because of its impact on high fuel prices — but should it fail, linkage with California and Quebec is her next preference. Inslee acknowledged that a loss would cause "some anxiety" in other states and would be “very disturbing on a national level.” But a win would "give more confidence for other states to move forward.” “Winning this,” he said, “will give people additional confidence for the variety of other ways we have to fight climate change in building codes and transportation policy and clean fuel standards and the like.” WASHINGTON WATCH WHAT BILLIONS? — With the presidential election a week away, most voters still don’t know much about the Biden administration laws that have unleashed hundreds of billions of dollars for climate and energy programs into the economy. Fewer than three in 10 voters said President Joe Biden’s biggest legislative accomplishments had improved their lives, according to a new POLITICO-Morning Consult poll as part of POLITICO’s ongoing “Biden’s Billions” series, Zack Colman reports. Voter attitudes about the domestic spending initiatives, which include the American Rescue Plan, bipartisan infrastructure law, CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act, have barely budged or even slightly dimmed since a similar April poll. No more than a quarter of the 4,002 registered voters said any of those programs had affected them positively. Most voters were at least aware of the IRA — but that might be due in part to Trump’s campaign message of rescinding large parts of what he calls the “green new scam” since that law received the most negative perception. The poll also uncovered surprising age data: Generation Z voters were least likely to say the IRA has had a positive impact on them, and that cohort also said it trusts Kamala Harris on climate less compared with every other age bracket. Two bright spots for Democrats: Independents are more bullish on the IRA than they were six months ago, and the number of voters who called the laws harmful was significantly lower than those who said the legislation had either benefited them or had a mixed impact. AROUND THE NATION SWING STATE PLAY — Electric vehicles, fracking, and manufacturing and climate policy have funneled their way into the national political conversation. So the POLITICO Energy podcast wanted to know: How do these issues look in the critical battlegrounds of Pennsylvania and Michigan, where they collide with blue-collar workers and swing voters? “The idea that all Pennsylvanians think about (fracking) is a little bit funny, actually, but also erroneous,” said Chris Borick , a political science professor at Muhlenberg College. “And then you get into what are their opinions on fracking? And they’re incredibly diverse.” Democrats hoping to run on the IRA are struggling to connect at the hub of the auto sector, said Barry Rabe, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. There’s still anxiety around the electric vehicle transition and the role of both the largest car companies and the unionized workforce in the region moving forward. “We’ll wonder for a long time what a different Biden campaign might have looked like, a younger perhaps Joe Biden who just loved to do those kinds of whistle stop tours, who really knew how to connect with local audiences,” Rabe said, adding that the question now becomes whether “electric vehicle politics is good politics in a state like Michigan, at least at this point in time.” Listen to the full episode for more. IN PASSING — The Biden administration is officially ponying up $2.26 billion to support a major lithium project in Nevada that’s fought through a slew of legal challenges and environmental and tribal opposition, Kelsey Tamborrino reports. The loan for the Thacker Pass project will help finance a lithium processing facility next to a mine site containing the largest-known lithium resource in North America, marking a major move in the administration’s push to build out a domestic clean energy economy and battery manufacturing supply chain to compete with China and achieve climate goals. The facilities are expected to produce about 40,000 tons per year of battery-grade lithium carbonate once operational — enough to support the production of batteries for up to 800,000 electric vehicles annually. The project is also expected to create 1,800 construction jobs and 360 permanent jobs. General Motors is a key investor, and Goldman Sachs said in a statement that it helped Lithium Americas, the company behind the project, raise $3 billion to finance Thacker Pass. YOU TELL US GAME ON — Welcome to the Long Game, where we tell you about the latest on efforts to shape our future. Join us every Tuesday as we keep you in the loop on the world of sustainability. Team Sustainability is editor Greg Mott and reporter Jordan Wolman. Reach us at gmott@politico.com and jwolman@politico.com. Sign up for the Long Game. It's free! WHAT WE'RE CLICKING — NATO warns that Russia is jeopardizing efforts to model global warming by withholding Arctic climate data. The Financial Times has that story. — The Washington Post takes a look at how and why Australia, the world’s leading exporter of iron ore, is shifting to manufacturing green steel. — China is using export restrictions to tighten its stranglehold on the market for key minerals needed to make semiconductors, the New York Times reports.   Follow us on Twitter Greg Mott @gwmott Jordan Wolman @jordanwolman   Follow us

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