SEATTLE — As the legislative session begins Monday, Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz is urging state lawmakers to adopt a carbon policy that will prepare state lands, forests, waters and local communities that depend on natural resources to better deal with climate change.
“The threats to our healthy and productive lands are real, we are already late in responding, and we cannot afford to wait for others to bring leadership to this challenge,” she wrote to legislative leaders in a letter urging them to act.
Gov. Jay Inslee said last month that he wants a new tax on carbon emissions with some revenue to backfill any state reserves tapped to pay for education. An Inslee spokeswoman said details of Inslee’s carbon proposal will be released at the start of the session.
State lawmakers will again likely propose measures that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by charging a carbon pollution tax or pricing in carbon in other ways.
Franz said in an interview with the Peninsula Daily News on Wednesday that she wants to ensure that new revenues raised from any carbon pricing policies are used to reduce carbon pollution and strengthen the ability of state forest, farms and communities to adapt to a changing climate.
She said using such money to fund education or other items — as Inslee has proposed in the past — that aren’t linked to carbon reduction misses opportunities to address problems now that will only be exacerbated in the future.
The state needs to ensure that money raised is focused on helping make state lands, water and communities more resilient to climate change impacts, she said.
Washington voters in 2016 rejected a carbon-tax ballot measure. Several groups such as the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy, Native American tribes and The Nature Conservancy have been discussing bringing a statewide initiative to the ballot, perhaps as early as November.
Franz said she wants to ensure that the state develops “smart carbon policy” that links that revenue to investments in reducing carbon emissions, such as maintaining the ability of farms and forests to store carbon.
Incentives could be used to encourage forest owners to harvest later while letting their trees grower bigger.
Revenues should also be invested in promoting healthy forests to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.
As head of the Department of Natural Resources, Franz is responsible for the state’s largest firefighting force and managing 5.6 million acres of state-owned lands.
She said the work of her agency is on the front lines of climate change, as wildfire risks intensify, sea levels rise and ocean acidification impacts shellfish and other industries.
For the past three years, the department worked with a panel of scientific experts including at the University of Washington and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to examine how climate change affects the agencies responsibilities.
Among the risks, the report noted that large fires are projected to become more frequent and fire seasons are likely to last longer and start earlier.
