Carbon Washington’s
revenue-neutral carbon tax
Yoram Bauman PhD
www.CarbonWA.org
CarbonWA as “relief pitcher”
• We are not opposing or in competition with
the governor’s policy.
• Our ballot measure is the “relief pitcher”
for the governor’s legislative route.
CarbonWA strategy
• File an Initiative to the Legislature in March,
collect 315,000 signatures by Nov 2015.
• The Jan 2016 legislature has to either pass
it or put it on the Nov 2016 ballot.
• We’ve raised ≈$100k in the last month and
hired co-directors Duncan Clauson
(operations) and Kyle Murphy (organizing).
CarbonWA policy
Carbon tax:
≈$1.7 billion
$25/ton
CO2
Tax cuts:
≈$1.7 billion
Manufacturers’
tax cuts: $200m
Working Families
Rebate: $200m
Cut sales tax
one full point:
$1.3 billion
Maintain revenue neutrality by slowly raising carbon tax rate
carbon.cs.washington.edu
Bipartisan effort
• We have letters of support from economists
around the state and are building support
from across the political spectrum.
• Seattle Times, Dec 21: “A revenue-neutral
approach... would be both less financially
risky and more politically viable...”
• Seattle Business magazine endorsement.
Carbon taxes are better than you think
• There’s this high-school mentality that says that
carbon taxes might win most studious...
• ...but not most popular...
• ...or even most likely to succeed (because you
supposedly need a carbon tax of $50 or $100 to
change behavior).
carbon.cs.washington.edu
Let’s take a swing at the ball!
Yoram Bauman PhD
www.CarbonWA.org