A Green New Deal for Washington State

I love Washington state.

Washingtonians live in one of the most gorgeous places on the planet, from the deep fjords, numerous islands and bays carved by glaciers in years long gone to the mountain ranges that cover the state. Hidden alpine lakes, intensive agricultural land to the east and south of the state, and lush temperate rainforests cover the peninsula. Trees and other greenery abound; if you’re looking for a beautiful place to live, it’s hard to beat Washington. Nor are we slouches in the business world with companies like Microsoft, Amazon, REI, and many more calling our state home; Washington was the 8th wealthiest state by median household income in 2019.

While about 60 percent of Washingtonians live in the Seattle metropolitan area, with an estimated 1.8 million more on their way to the Puget Sound region by 2050, Seattle and Western Washington exert undue gravity on the rest of the state, often creating tension with rural Washingtonians who feel underrepresented politically. Our state is diverse – a tech hub, a historical airplane manufacturer, and the heart of much of our country’s agricultural production with more than 300 Washington grown commercial crops and livestock products exported to a tune of $7.9 billion a year. We’re one of the most socially liberal states in the country, yet we aren’t leading on addressing climate change and taking advantage of the opportunity to build a sustainable economic future.

For a state with so many industries reliant on particularly ecological conditions— such as our national leading production of apples, cherries, and hops—we’re not taking climate change nearly seriously enough. Washington is second only to California in wine production, we have significant commercial fishing and shellfish production— all industries that will be drastically affected by a 2° increase in global temperatures. Our changing climate is also heavily impacting our forests, worsening wildfires, causing billions in dollars of damage, putting thousands of people at risk, and choking the air with toxic clouds of smoke.

Part of our failure to adequately address the climate crisis comes down to our tax system, the most regressive in the country. Since so much of the budget comes from sales and property taxes, which hit lower earners harder, it is hard to raise additional funds for large transportation projects. Part of this is due to the state’s split rural-urban nature, which means climate solutions can’t be one-size-fits-all. Regardless of the challenges, we can do more.

We have to fix the tax system—we should put in place an income and capital gains tax on high earners while lowering the sales tax to put more money in the hands of the middle and working class. By doing so, we enable ourselves to invest significantly in preparing for the worsening effects of climate change and lowering our impact on the environment. Yet the problem goes beyond taxes and we need to talk about the key solutions.

With that in mind, I am writing a series of articles focused on essential parts of a vision for a sustainable green economy in Washington State. If done in concert, this Washington State Green New Deal can help ease the transition from the fossil fuel economy while developing sustainable new industries with green union jobs. Here are a few key ways we can do that, which I’ll be writing about in the coming weeks:

How we build

Construction and buildings together account for 36% of global energy use and 39% of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. With millions of residents moving to our state, we need to invest heavily in new sustainably built affordable housing:

1. Mandate new government buildings meet passive house or net-zero energy standards.

2. Begin to retrofit current government buildings for energy use

3. Incentivize passive house buildings at a state and local level

4. Zoning Reform

How we move

Andrew Grant Houston (Ace) wrote an excellent piece illustrating how a Washington State Green New Deal requires that we invest heavily in public transit in the high-density Puget Sound region. I’ll be getting in-depth on how we can do that, and evaluating how our region is performing in regards to bike and pedestrian infrastructure as well. 

• Investment in transit and bike/pedestrian infrastructure

• Changing the way we zone and build to make 15-minute neighborhoods

• Halting freeway widening

More than that, we must halt all road widening; adding lanes to freeways locks us into our current unsustainable transportation infrastructure rather than investing in transit and micromobility. 

Vehicle standards

While electric vehicles won’t fix our transportation-related emissions alone, Washington State needs to continue to remain in lockstep with California on pushing for cleaner fuel standards; and we need to join California in their ban on the sale of new combustion-engine vehicles by 2035. We also need to evaluate the retrofitting of current combustion vehicles to electric. 

Mass timber

I’ve previously written about how Seattle and Washington State should lead on mass timber. This issue can cross the rural and urban divide by thinning forests for wildfire prevention, building sustainable housing, and developing rural economies. 

Sustainable farming

We need to evaluate our farming practices for sustainability. Washington farmers are incredible in this regard and achieve some of the highest yields in the world. However, we need to evaluate our practices and prepare for future water shortages to prepare our agricultural system to meet climate change’s coming challenges.

Divestment

Washington State must divest our Public Employees Retirement System from the fossil fuel industry as soon as possible. Not only are fossil fuel investments which will founder as our economy transitions a drain upon the success of the public retirement system, but our support of those funds is also a failure of vision. We must divest public funds and invest in new, renewable energy sources, and green jobs helping to more quickly build those industries in Washington State and beyond.