Campaign News

Sightline Weighs In

• “We find I-732 a worthy policy to put Washington on a path to cutting pollution and encouraging clean energy while also helping low-income families by making Washington State taxes less regressive.”
• “I-732 would give Washington the continent’s, if not the world’s, most potent, persistent, and comprehensive incentive to move swiftly beyond dirty fossil fuels and to a carbon-free future.”
• “I-732 is revenue-neutral, to the best of anyone’s ability to forecast it… [The argument to the contrary] is a red herring… I-732 is likely to be much closer to revenue-neutral than the [Department of Revenue’s] forecast suggests… Even if the Department’s estimates are correct, I-732 will still be a rounding error… I-732 will likely have less than a 1 percent impact on state tax revenue for decades.”
• “Initiative 732 does exactly what the scientists and economists prescribe: it sets a science-based, steadily rising price on pollution. The citizens’ initiative covers most of the state’s climate pollution, makes the tax code more progressive, and is administratively elegant.”
• “I-732 would be the biggest improvement in the progressivity of Washington’s state tax system in 40 years.”

You’ve heard this stuff from us for months, but these quotes are from an independent in-depth 3-part analysis of I-732 from Sightline Institute. Go read the analysis yourself (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). And then here are four things you can do right now to get the word out and support the campaign!

1. Share these quotes and articles with everyone you know via email, Facebook, Twitter, in-person, etc.
2. Share them with lots of people you don’t know by writing a Letter to the Editor of your local paper.
3. Get re-energized to spend the next 95 days participating in our history-making grassroots campaign by emailing me or [email protected] to get plugged in with our campaign by making phone calls and coming to an event and knocking on doors.
4. And of course we need your donations so that we can keep rolling until November 8. (Twenty bucks will get you a yard sign! And if your employer provides matching funds to 501(c)(3) nonprofits then you can double your impact by donating to our partners at Better World Credits; email [email protected] for details.)

New Endorsements

• Representative Sharon Wylie, D-49th district (central Vancouver)
• 18th Legislative District Democrats (parts of Clark County)
• Phil Rockefeller, former WA state senator (D-Bainbridge) and former member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council: “I-732 is not only a logical step, but it’s the only option we have at this time to move the ball forward and make statewide progress in combating the disruptive effects of climate change.”
• Take a look at all our supporters and endorsements here.

Support Our Partners & Job Opportunities

In The News

Great Letters to the Editor from Scott Rhodes in the Skagit Valley Herald and from Laurel Wolf in the Oregonian… congrats and thank you! Elsewhere: It’s got too much climate skepticism and too much of a focus on political in-fighting, but still: this is probably the best carbon tax story that’s ever run on Fox News. (See also “Conservatives must embrace the fight against climate change” by Vernon Lindo of RepublicEn.org. And, on the other side of the political spectrum, organizations with #BlackLivesMatter released a platform that, under the heading of Economic Justice, includes a call to “shift from sales taxes to taxing externalities” and also a call to “expand the earned income tax credit”.) In wonkier news, I co-authored a Brookings Institution paper on state-level carbon taxes. And go read Republican Congressman Richard Hanna’s op-ed endorsement of Hillary Clinton: “Our country is desperate for a functioning two-party system. A system that understands that compromise is the sweet spot of peace in a pluralistic society that values tolerance and inclusiveness. Not these endless attempts to run the table in two- and four-year cycles that produce few results and parties that seem to regard gridlock as an accomplishment… Government has become unable to address big problems. Talking points are presented as if they were solutions. Critical issues like tax reform, infrastructure, immigration, the environment and any future investments in people and assets are relegated to the opinions of the extremes of both parties. Electing Donald Trump will only make this worse, much worse.”

Passing I-732 will be one step to make this better. So go read the Sightline analysis again (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) and then write a Letter to the Editor and join the campaign!

Game of Phones and Social Media Ambassadors

Social media ambassadors: Looking for another way to help? We need our supporters to do more than occasionally like our posts on Facebook, we need you to become a social media ambassador. Data shows that voters today receive a majority of their news from social media and are more likely to believe what they hear from their friends than from the media. If you have not already done so, Please like our Facebook page YesOnI732 and follow our @CarbonWA twitter feed. If you are willing to invest a few minutes each week helping with our social media campaign by becoming an ambassador please email [email protected]. When we make posts about important news, events, videos or competitions we need you to like, retweet, and share our posts with a message from you encouraging your friends to share it on their walls as well!

Nights Watch: (2,500 call club!) Aaron Tam, Allie Bull, Quillan Robinson

Let’s win!

Yoram and the Yes on 732 team