Washington state is crafting its ambitious cap-and-invest law to reduce the state's emissions by 95% by 2050 and is seeking comments from the public.

The Climate Commitment Act was passed in Olympia in 2021 and compliance begins in 2023. The measure aims to cut emissions by requiring businesses emitting at least 25,000 tons of carbon pollution to bid for allowances.

David Mendoza, director of advocacy and engagement for The Nature Conservancy in Washington, said the program also includes air-quality commitments for communities hit hardest by air pollution.

"Emissions like particulate matter lead to negative health outcomes, higher rates of asthma, higher rates of heart disease, lower life expectancy," Mendoza outlined. "And so, there's a very rigorous program that's being developed right now by the Department of Ecology to set air-quality targets, so that we're seeing a set and specified reduction in these harmful criteria pollutants."

The Department of Ecology is seeking public comment through Nov. 4 as it develops rules for the program. The agency wants guidance on how to best identify communities overburdened by air pollution and where to invest in air monitors. It has scheduled some online public comment sessions, including today at 6 p.m.

Mendoza pointed out Washington has learned from California's cap-and-trade program, which has been criticized for not reducing pollution in overburdened communities.

"The key component that differentiates our policy from California's -- and, I think, other cap-and-trade programs that have been passed -- is the air quality program that's embedded, and a part of this work," Mendoza contended.

Mendoza added the 2021 HEAL Act established the Environmental Justice Council, which will play an important role in shaping the law.

"What we're going for is essentially a culture shift in how state government interacts with underrepresented communities, overburdened communities," Mendoza explained. "Instead of being kind of an external stakeholder, how are we bringing them in to be a partner in this process, so their concerns are baked into all these policies from the beginning?"

Community members in Seattle had a unique opportunity to weigh in on the policies guiding the city's climate goals.

In 2019, the City of Seattle passed the Green New Deal Resolution and Green New Deal Executive Order, with the goal of eliminating climate pollution by 2030.

To help guide that process, the initiative's oversight board supported community assemblies.

Peter Hasegawa is the organizing director at MLK Labor and co-chair of the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

He said the idea behind the community assemblies was to do deep listening with many different community members.

"To have the opportunity to present information and get feedback," said Hasegawa, "and have people think about solutions together over a longer period of time, was appealing to us because we thought we could get higher quality feedback."

MLK Labor and Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle hosted the assemblies.

The goal was to ensure that people on the front-lines had their voices heard, and were at the table as the city crafts policies going forward.

Faduma Fido is lab leader with the People's Economy Lab, which helped support the community assemblies.

She said they're piloting this type of engage at the city level because people are tired of going to listening sessions.

She said the assemblies provide a more empowering setting, with people compensated for their time and eating meals together. Fido said they want to bring democratic practices like these back.

"There's an appetite and willingness now to empower the citizens," said Fido, "empower communities to practice democracy beyond the ballot box, because often that tends to be very polarizing."

Hasegawa said they heard from a variety of people over the three sessions.

In the first, they heard about people's experiences being affected by extreme weather, such as the 2021 heat dome, and a freeze last winter that caused many people's pipes to burst.

In the second session, they heard about wins on the ground to protect people and workers from the effects of climate change.

Hasegawa said in the third, they brainstormed about what the city and local labor movement can do about climate change.

"In certain ways that ended up being the easiest session," said Hasegawa, "because there was a very high level of consensus that what workers in Seattle want is to be protected from extreme weather, they want to be protected from heat and smoke, and bursting pipes, and they want to be protected whether they work in a building or outside or in a home."




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Electric vehicles have seen a nationwide uptick, yet Wisconsin lags behind - with EVs making up only about 1% of all cars on the road.

Misconceptions about cost, maintenance and performance are top of mind for hesitant buyers. But in Wisconsin, where about 30% of the state's population is rural, accessibility is one of the biggest concerns.

Jeremiah Brockman, chapter president of the Wisconsin Electric Vehicle Association, said he thinks it's only partly because rural areas in general are slower to catch on to some trends. He said some areas still don't have enough charging stations.

"Part of the problem, too," he said, "is you have more farmland in rural areas, and if you spend the entire day out on a farm and you're driving around your many acres of land, you worry about where you're going to charge your vehicle at that point, and I think that's another hurdle."

Compared with neighboring states, Wisconsin has significantly fewer charging stations. In an effort to help bolster the state's EV infrastructure, Wisconsin passed a law earlier this year to install a network of 65 fast-charging stations statewide. The plan is to install them every 50 miles along the interstate system and major highways through next year.

The law also makes it easier for gas stations, convenience stores and other businesses to operate vehicle charging stations. However, they'd pay a new EV charging tax beginning next year.

Even though the law was Republican-authored in Wisconsin, Brockman said he believes the political divide is another factor in electric-vehicle ownership hesitation.

"Honestly, this a part of a larger national conversation where electric vehicles are kind of being politicized," he said. "I'd like to say the benefits are there. It doesn't matter who you voted for last Tuesday, the benefits are there, no matter what."

Those benefits include lower fuel and maintenance costs, lower emissions and potential tax breaks. So far, Dane County and Madison lead the way for EV adoption in Wisconsin. As part of the mayor's climate-change policy to cut the city's emissions in half by 2030, Madison has added electric buses and recently unveiled the state's first electric garbage trucks.


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By Grace Hussain for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi for Commonwealth News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

The food we eat is responsible for as much as a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Most of that comes from beef — including millions of burgers served up by fast food chains across the world. To date, fast food companies have made little progress in curbing their climate pollution, but pressure to hold these corporations accountable is beginning to come from what may seem like an unlikely group: their own shareholders. This year, fast food chains Jack in the Box and Wingstop agreed to publish their first set of measurable climate targets, led by a group called The Accountability Board.

The two-year-old nonprofit owns shares in roughly 100 publicly traded companies. Its purpose: “to hold companies accountable on issues relating to the environment, social matters and corporate governance,” says Matt Prescott. Prescott is a co-founder and one of the leaders of the organization.

How Shareholders Pressure Jack in the Box and Other Fast Food Chains

Shareholders, at least those that own a certain percentage of a company, are able to file proposals asking for action by the company that the shareholder wants to see. A growing movement of nonprofit shareholders have also used this strategy to increase corporate accountability. Kevin Chuah, PhD, an assistant professor at Northeastern University who researches stakeholder activism, explains the tactic: “They’re using the financial system infrastructure to enable them to get access to companies that they might not get access to otherwise.”

The Accountability Board focuses on the food and agriculture sector in particular, says Prescott, including industry giants like Tyson Foods and Hormel Foods. While issues like corporate governance and diversity, equity, inclusion and justice are universal across industries, food and agriculture companies are unique in their outsized impact on the environment and animal welfare, Prescott says.

Most multinational corporations have made public climate commitments, but many have failed to back them up with actionable plans for accomplishing those goals. That was the case too with Jack in the Box, Prescott tells Sentient. “They’ve got disclosures about risks posed by climate change and other environmental issues, but the company didn’t actually have measurable goals for reducing its emissions,” he says. But thanks to the newly-passed proposal, now they will.

Jack in the Box now reports scope 1 and 2 emissions — emissions the company directly emits or that are generated from the electricity or other utilities the chain uses. In the food sector however, as much as 90 percent of greenhouse gasses come from scope 3 sources, with most of those coming from meat and dairy products. Scope 3 refers to emissions that come from a company’s supply chain, which in this case, includes the very beef burgers that are a massive driver of food-related emissions.

Yet an important part of The Accountability Board’s strategy is structuring their proposals strategically to make it more likely to actually pass. The group aims to keep them general, says Prescott, in this case asking for measurable targets, but not prescribing exactly what those targets should be.

Ahead of the vote, the nonprofit’s team spent time engaging with the largest shareholders to ensure they would find the proposal appealing. When it comes to “major shareholders, like BlackRock and Vanguard Group,” says Prescott, they lean against supporting proposals “that are overly prescriptive.”

A Brief History of Shareholder Activism

Shareholder activism traces its roots back to the 1980s, when individuals or groups would acquire shares in companies in order to push for some kind of change within the corporation. At that time, shareholder activists usually sold their shares once they accomplished their goals, earning them the nickname of “corporate raiders.”

Since then, shareholder activists have managed to reform their reputation, even with corporate executives. According to Chuah, whose research focuses specifically on environmental, social and governance issues, a number of executives can point to “situations where shareholders have brought interesting information to us that we hadn’t thought about before.”

The Accountability Board doesn’t usually sell its shares, instead choosing to maintain and also grow its portfolio by acquiring stock in new companies, says Prescott. Most of the shares the organization owns were bought with an initial $11 million grant from the non-profit foundation, Open Philanthropy. Tax records indicate the group’s investments netted them $17,280 in 2022, but because The Accountability Board was formed in the latter part of that year, the figure only reflects a few months of proceeds.

For Chuah, shareholder activists are one piece of the bigger picture of change. Agitator nonprofits and religious groups are often the “innovators,” he says, the ones “who get issues onto the table and effectively bring them to the attention of the mainstream.” Next, “the institutional investors get on board.” Real progress, he says, will require both: those working within and outside of institutions.


Grace Hussain wrote this article for Sentient.