Earlier this month, Jay Inslee’s Department of Ecology (DOE) released new carbon reduction regulatory rules—rules Inslee thinks he can impose on the state using executive authority. Under the new carbon rules, the industries deemed as “large emitters” would be required to reduce carbon emissions by 5 percent every three years. The so-called “Clean Air Rule”, would initially apply to about 24 manufacturing plants, refineries, power plants, and natural gas distributors. As the threshold is lowered over time, many more facilities would be covered by the rules.
Todd Myers of the Washington Policy Center recently referred to the DOE’s plan as the “most backward approach to this issue that can be imagined.” Myers stated, “Assuming you want to reduce carbon, regulation is the least rationale and most expensive way to do it.”
The problem, according to Myers, is that the DOE’s plan would reward companies for suspending operations in Washington State and selling their carbon credits. “[The DOE’s] plan actually pays for taking jobs overseas, but punishes for keeping jobs here. If you stay, your costs go up,” he said.
The plan is just another example of Inslee risking our state’s economic wellbeing for his extreme “green” agenda. Inslee’s original cap-and-tax scheme—which members of his own party refused to support—threatened to reduce the average annual employment by approximately 56,000 jobs over 20 years. Nearly 6,000 of those jobs would have been in the manufacturing sector.
Inslee’s intentions are clear: he will risk the people’s livelihoods if it means he can pass his highly flawed “green” agenda. After all, rich campaign donors like Tom Steyer demand no less.
Come up with a better plan that doesn’t perpetuate our dependence on the fossil fuel industries.
Anything would be better than what that idiot Inslee proposes… doing nothing is more constructive than anything he proposes considering that his “carbon rules” would have such an infinitesimally small effect on the climate.