A Washington State ballot initiative to implement a statewide carbon tax (I-732) picked up support from two key conservatives.
Former Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna, responding to vast environmental opposition to the initiative, said, “any ballot measure that the Sierra Club despises is worth considering. Conservatives who want to reduce carbon emissions know that a revenue-neutral approach that raises the cost of carbon use but lowers other taxes is the only sensible way to go. The left opposes it because raising gobs of new state tax revenue is their Holy Grail, and this measure doesn’t do that.”
Likewise, former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA) threw his support behind the measure. “We have a responsibility to our children and their children to tackle climate change now as every year we wait, the costs to mitigate impact of climate change go up, and the costs to solve the problem begin to go out of reach. Passing I-732 is an opportunity for the voters of our state to show the other Washington the way to a bipartisan solution for climate change.”
Voters will decide on I-732 on November 8th.