SMEA Professor and Associate Director Nives Dolšak and UW Director of the Center for Environmental Politics Aseem Prakash recently wrote an article featured on the The Hill titled “The key to a successful carbon tax is how you spend the money.” To examine the politics of carbon tax, Dolšak and Prakash compared three carbon tax proposals, all from Washington state: the 2018 carbon tax proposed by Governor Jay Inslee, a counter proposal by Washington Land Commissioner Hilary Franz, and I-732.

While Washington policy makers are still debating how high the carbon tax should be, it is becoming clear that the conflict is increasingly over how and where to spend the tax money. The bottom line: The carbon tax saga reveals a new inconvenient truth: Interest groups are mobilized if the tax can be used to fund their favored projects. To figure out the politics of carbon tax, follow the money.