Climate change on the ballot this year

Candidates running for Washington’s 17th Legislative District, Position 2 seat were recently asked by a League of Women Voters of Clark County moderator about their views on efforts to repeal the state’s landmark 2021 Climate Commitment Act (CCA). 

Washougal Mayor David Stuebe, the Republican candidate, said the issue “goes back to people thinking, ‘Hey, we have all the answers,’ and this is a new mandate and this mandate hurts us, and we really need to look into the science, the numbers and what’s happening with this.” 

Stuebe said he’s “all about the climate thing,” noting that he knows “something is going on” when he looks at Mount Hood and sees no snow or notices that our area is being hit with wildfires more often. 

But when it comes to solutions like the CCA, a market-based program that targets the largest greenhouse-gas emitters in the state, sets a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, ensures Washington will meet its climate change emissions-reduction goals, fines violators and has provided billions of dollars for clean energy programs across Washington, including programs that promote and create clean transportation opportunities, build climate resilience in local communities and address health disparities across the state — solutions that have proven popular with hundreds of diverse groups, including the Economic Opportunity Institute, the Environment and Climate Caucus of the Washington Democratic Party, Young Democrats of Clark County, the American Planning Association’s Washington Chapter, the American Institute of Architects’ Seattle Chapter and the Washington Prescribed Council, Stuebe was dismissive.  

“We can’t just jump in and say, ‘OK, here’s a mandate,’ because one person thinks they have all the answers,” Stuebe said, claiming that the CCA has “no transparency, no accountability” for the funds it collects despite a provision in the CCA that requires agencies that are using the funds to report where the money is going and to report their progress toward environmental justice goals.

“Instead of just saying, ‘Let’s just throw a whole bunch of money at it,’ we need to be smart about that, and we need to say, ‘OK, what is the right thing to do?’” Stuebe argued during an Oct. 5 candidate forum held inside the Camas Public Library. 

Stuebe’s Democratic opponent, Terri Niles, argued that repealing the CCA — as Washington voters are being asked to do this November via Initiative 2117, an initiative proposed by a hedge fund millionaire — would be “a serious, serious problem” for 17th District constituents and for the entire state. 

“When you talk about widening sidewalks and streets,” Niles said, pointing toward Stuebe, “that’s paid for with (CCA) dollars. I have exactly where that (money) went. That information is available.”

It is important that people “realize how important this is,” Niles said. 

“Especially in the 17th District, the repeal of the (CCA) would really hurt. I encourage everybody to look at that,” Niles said, noting that there is “nothing in the (CCA) repeal that guarantees that your gas is going to go down.”

Anyone who has closely followed elections, especially on a local and statewide level, over the past three decades can recognize that, despite the fact that finding solutions to climate change, preventing the planet from heating up even further and becoming more resilient to the impacts of climate change that are already happening impact all of us, the issue has always been a partisan one, with Democratic candidates and officials working toward achieving climate change goals and Republican candidates and officials either questioning climate change altogether or telling us that the solutions are just too gosh-darn expensive. 

You know what’s really expensive? Continuing to drag our feet even in the face of undeniable destruction due to human-caused climate change. 

This week, for instance, we learned that scientists are alarmed by a new report showing the natural “carbon sinks” we rely on in the fight against climate change “absorbed almost no net carbon dioxide last year.” 

“In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed,” Mother Jones magazine reported. “The final result was that forest, plants, and soil — as a net category — absorbed almost no carbon.”

If that trend continues, climate scientists warn we could be in even greater peril from a warming planet, and far sooner than we anticipated. 

“Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end,” the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said during a New York Climate Week event held this September, as reported by Mother Jones. “We’re seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth’s systems. We’re seeing massive cracks on land — terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability.”

And when it comes to climate change, humans aren’t the only living things facing devastation. A recent analysis by the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Living Planet Report, shows wildlife populations across the planet have died off at “catastrophic” rates since 1970. 

“Monitored populations of vertebrates (mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish) have seen a devastating 69% drop on average since 1970,” WWF reported in 2022. 

We’ve known for several years that the impacts of climate change are accelerating faster than originally predicted. A United Nations climate panel has warned that, as Nature magazine reported in February 2022, “rising greenhouse-gas emissions could soon outstrip the ability of many communities to adapt.” 

Just two years ago, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its first look at how doing nothing — the preferred action for many Republican officials and candidates, who have been claiming for decades that climate change prevention comes with too big of a price tag — will cost the United States. As NPR reported in 2022, that report showed how “unchecked global warming would impact the federal budget, looking at its potential to dampen the economy as a whole, and balloon the costs of climate-related programs over time,” eventually costing our country an estimated $2 trillion a year. 

Ballots for the Nov. 5 general election are being mailed this week. As Camas-Washougal voters consider their options, we urge you to vote for the candidates who will fight for our environment and work to not only prevent climate change from getting even worse, but also find ways — including standing up for landmark initiatives like the Climate Commitment Act — to fund resiliency programs that will help our communities better adapt to the inescapable impacts of climate change.