Washington is on its way to becoming the second state to have a comprehensive cap-and-trade program after the state’s Democrat-controlled Senate voted Saturday to approve a bill modified by the House.

The Democrat-dominated House’s modifications to SB 5126 helped convert an April 8 Senate vote of 25-24 on the original bill to Saturday’s 27-22 vote on the final bill almost along party lines. (See Cap-and-trade Bill Squeaks Through Wash. Senate.) The House approved the modified bill Friday 54-43, mostly along party lines.

Modifications included a 5-cent/gallon hike on Washington’s gasoline tax of 67.8 cents/gallon.

Gov. Jay Inslee has sought passage of the concept for several years. When he signs the bill, Washington will join California as the nation’s only states with comprehensive cap-and-trade programs. California is in the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) cap-and-trade pact with Quebec.

“We’re taking the theory of the Paris climate accords and turning it into reality,” the bill’s sponsor Sen. Reuven Carlyle (D) said during Saturday’s floor debate. The Paris agreement seeks to limit global warming by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), and also to pursue efforts to limit that increase to 2.7 degrees (1.5 degrees Celsius).

Sen. Shelly Short (R) said that fuel prices will skyrocket because of the legislation. “We’re looking at the full-scale obliteration of our economy.”

The bill requires that Inslee appoint a task force by July 1 to lead brainstorming efforts in creating a cap-and-trade program administered by the Washington Department of Ecology.

Under Carlyle’s bill, the task force would create a system to set total industrial carbon emissions annually, a cap that slowly decreases through the years. Large emitters would submit bids to the state quarterly in an auction for segments of that year’s overall limit and be allowed to emit that amount in greenhouse gases. Companies would be allowed to trade, buy and sell those allowances.

An environmental justice panel would be appointed to ensure low-income neighborhoods and communities of color would not be disproportionally hit with excess pollution. The bill anticipates the auctions would raise several hundred million dollars that the state can allocate to those areas.

Preliminary recommendations would be due by Nov. 1, with final recommendations ready to be sent to the legislature by Dec. 1.

The program would tackle facilities that emit 25,000 metric tons or more of GHGs annually. There are at least 100 such facilities in the state, including the oil, cement, steel and power industries and large food processing plants.

Carbon emissions have been blamed for bad health effects; increased wildfires; changing snowpack melt patterns in the Cascade Range, which translates to streams not feeding irrigated farms at the proper times; and creating acid rain that destroys the shells of baby oysters in the state’s shellfish industry. A 2018 University of Washington study said the state’s poor face additional health dangers from global warming.

During Friday’s House vote, Rep Joe Fitzgibbon (D) cited Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory recording the largest carbon dioxide reading in history earlier this month: 420 parts per million. That compares to a pre-industrial age estimate of 280 ppm.

‘Biggest Job Killer’

Republican opposition focused on claims of drastically higher gas prices, claims that the measures will drive jobs from the state, criticism of the fuzziness of what constitutes “environmental justice” and the argument that anything that Washington does will not affect the world’s global warming picture.

GOP senators cited estimates that the cap-and-trade legislation will translate to real-life gas-pump price increases ranging from 26 cents/gallon to $2.41 per gallon by 2030.

The $2.41/gallon increase claim comes from a recent study by NERA Economic Consulting, a firm whose emissions-fighting cost estimates were cited by President Donald Trump when he removed the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. The Western States Petroleum Association commissioned the NERA study, which looked at two scenarios: Washington having its own cap-and-trade program and the state joining the WCI pact. The $2.41 figure comes from the go-it-alone scenario with the figures being significantly less if it links with California and Quebec.

“This piece of legislation left the Senate [on April 8] as a giant job killer. … It returned to the Senate [on Friday] as the biggest job killer,” said Sen. Doug Ericksen (R), the legislature’s leading climate change skeptic. Sen. Judy Warnick (R) added: “$2.41 per gallon will be a killer for our farmers.”

Sen. Perry Dozier (R) said the cap-and-trade bill will hurt Walla Walla County’s largest employer enough to force it to move elsewhere, taking with it much of the county’s tax revenue. He did not name that employer, but the rural county is host to a large 400-employee paper and packaging material mill owned by the Packaging Corporation of America, which was hit in February with a $28,500 federal fine for seven weeks of air quality violations in 2020.

Republicans argued that any Washington measures will be worthless, because China and India emit vast amounts of carbon pollution that dwarf this state’s output. “Here we’re going to be punishing our own people,” said Sen. Lynda Wilson (R). “Passing this bill is not going to fix the problem. I’m not understanding why we have to do this today when it is not helping the environment.”

The GOP senators and their House counterparts did not raise the argument Friday and Saturday that some environmental organizations have used to criticize cap-and-trade, while instead favoring a straight carbon tax. (See Carbon Tax Bill Gains Supporters in Wash.) Those groups and some Democratic legislators originally opposed Carlyle’s bill because they believe a cap-and-trade program is too easily manipulated by polluting industries.

Sen. Marko Liias (D) said the cap-and-trade legislation fits neatly with President Joe Biden’s recent climate summit pronouncements in which he tried to persuade other nations to go along with his goal of cutting carbon emissions to 50% of 2005 levels by 2030. (See Biden Commits US to Cutting GHG Emissions 50% by 2030.)

Sen. Rebecca Saldana (D), who represents a heavily industrial, multi-ethnic, low-income section of Seattle, said her constituents suffer from higher-than-normal instances of asthma, citing it as a reason for the environmental justice provision in the bill.

“It seems to me there is a problem of denial with the problem of climate change,” said Sen. Jesse Salomon (D). “It’s hard to be bipartisan when there is a clear non-acceptance of the science of climate change.”