January 2015

Hello carbon tax friends:

Campaign co-directors: Just a reminder that Kyle Murphy and Duncan Clauson will be starting on Monday as campaign co-directors! You can reach Kyle (who will focus on Organizing) at [email protected] and Duncan (who will focus on Operations) at [email protected], but please note that they don’t start full-time until Monday. more

Hello carbon tax friends:

Campaign co-directors: We are delighted to announce that Kyle Murphy and Duncan Clauson will be starting on February 1 as campaign co-directors! Kyle, who worked last year as Field Director for the Yes for Seattle Transit campaign, will focus on Organizing; Duncan, who has an MPA from the UW Evans School of Public Affairs, will focus on Operations. Both have already been working hard on the campaign as volunteers, and as full-time paid staff they will follow in the footsteps of our previous stellar staffers Claire Meints and Kristy Royce. You can reach Kyle and Duncan at [email protected] and [email protected], but please note that they don’t start full-time until the first of February! more

Our friends at the Washington Business Alliance are giving a bit of push-back against carbon taxes:

Only a high carbon price, in excess of $50/tonne, will materially alter electricity generation given the dispatch order of plentiful, cheap coal and natural gas. Transportation fuels are relatively inelastic, similarly requiring a high price and long-term commitment to meaningfully impact emissions.

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If there’s one thing everybody knows about carbon pricing, it’s that there’s not much effect on consumption of transportation fuels. In econ-speak, the explanation is that demand is very inelastic: a price increase of (say) 10 percent reduces consumption by much less than 10 percent. In plain English, the explanation is that driving is something that people “have to do”, so price changes don’t have much impact on how much driving people do. more

Hello carbon tax friends:

More media: One of our eight winter deliverables is to become part of the conversation, and following up on our back-to-back appearances last in the Seattle Times (an op-ed and an editorial) we’ve got an article this week in Forbes by Jim Conca (“Can Capitalism Save the Planet?”). more

Hello carbon tax friends: I know I already sent out this week’s email blast, but there’s big news (plus I didn’t send out an email last week, so I’m cap-and-trading ? more

Hello carbon tax friends, and happy new year! more