BURIEN, Wash. — During a news conference alongside Highline School District's electric buses in Burien, Governor Jay Inslee, lawmakers and labor and healthcare representatives announced plans for legislation to be introduced in January targeting the oil industry. They also called attention to the health impacts of climate change.
"Oil and gas pollution is attacking our state and attacking our children's future and indeed attacking the entire nation and planet," Inslee said. "We intend to defeat climate change, we intend to reign in the terrible pollution that the oil and gas industry is causing across our state and our nation, and we won't stand for it."
In a news release, the governor's office said oil and gas companies have taken in record profits while "communities everywhere grapple with record heat waves, deadly flooding, drought, wildfires and pollution-related medical conditions that average people and state governments are expected to pay for on top of sky-high fuel prices."
Inslee says those fuel prices are the choice of companies -- and due in part to pipeline closures. Republican State Senator Jeff Wilson argues they've come as a result of impacts of the Climate Commitment Act.
"It's turned now into a political blame game that comes at the expense of every Washington working family's expense," Wilson said. "While others may want to accuse oil companies of price gouging, I'll fire back and say- gouging has been occurring in the last few years' state budgets. It seems the state has had an enormous appetite to collect more money and spend away in our biennial budgets."
Meanwhile, the governor's office says that "all of the revenue from the Climate Commitment Act goes back into our communities to make them healthier, safer and more affordable," using tools like heat pumps and electric transit, and "the overwhelming majority of what people pay at the pump goes into the coffers of fossil fuel executives and shareholders."
Inslee's office and lawmakers say January's legislation will first require companies to open up their books and reveal any evidence of price-gouging. The governor said if there is evidence of wrongdoing, a commission to implement consequences could follow.
Wilson says while he agrees with the goal to achieve a cleaner environment, he does not believe this was the way to do it.
"It's too much too soon; I think it is a goal that we all share to transition to say, cleaner energy opportunities, to move about with less of an impact on our environment, I think everybody would like to get there," Wilson said. "This climate commitment act has proved to be a little too aggressive. It's so aggressive that it's not awarded us with the number one state in the nation for how expensive [gas] is."
The governor's office disputes that the act is a key driver for gas price increases, writing in a statement that "since long before Washington’s climate policies were enacted, the west coast and Washington state have consistently seen some of the highest gas prices in the country — with no transparency as to why oil companies are charging Washington drivers so much more than almost anywhere else. The industry’s shroud of invisibility is precisely why state leaders are calling for legislation."