Maxmillian Robespierre, notorious leader-turned-target of the French Revolution (funny how these things turn out) once excused his regime’s excesses in pursuit of utopia with—of all things—a breakfast analogy: “On ne saurait faire une omelette sans casser des oeufs.”
That is, “one cannot make an omelet without breaking some eggs.” To which George Orwell much later acerbically asked: “But where is the omelet?” While the guillotine as a political instrument has—fortunately—long since fallen out of favor (at least in the West)—the lesson to be gleaned from this cross-generational exchange holds endures: When leaders impose drastic measures in pursuit of what they claim will be vast and resplendent results, they should at the very least approximate the ends that ostensibly justified the means. If not, they should be removed from office—of course via electoral defeat, not decapitation. (I want to be very, very clear about that.)
Enter Washington’s leviathan “anti-climate-change” program, inaugurated under former Governor Jay Inslee and continuing, without waver, under successor Governor Bob Ferguson. Granted, Inslee never went as far as former President Barack Obama, who upon winning his party’s nomination in 2008 declared “this [is] the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet beg[ins] to heal.” Yeesh.
But Inslee did talk a very big game. Introducing his signature Climate Commitment Act, Inslee in 2020 declared that its cap-and-invest program, “would reduce nearly 30 million metric tons of emissions by 2030—a 35% reduction from current projections.” Despite its legal obligation to timely publish emission-reduction numbers, the Department of Ecology has, to put it mildly, been less than forthcoming. Its report, issued on January 6, 2025, magically excluded numbers from 2022 and 2023. CADF and the Washington Policy Center (“WPC”) recently filed a lawsuit demanding Ecology publish the full numbers. Stay tuned on that front….
Halfway to this decade’s-end deadline—and two years into emissions auctions—the numbers we can access do not engender confidence. In its report on Ecology’s lack of reporting, the WPC estimates that “Washington will have to reduce emissions by more than three times the emissions reduction during the COVID year of 2020 if it is to achieve the objectives outlined in state law.” More damning, perhaps, is that we are losing pace with these promised benchmarks despite the major negative—and wholly avoidable—impacts this backslide has and continues to have on the state economy. Gas was already expensive in Washington—granted, part of that is our inland distance from major petroleum intake hubs on the Gulf of America.
But atop this geoeconomic disadvantage, the CCA substantially slowed the decline of Washington energy costs compared to nationwide averages. This was despite Inslee’s bad-faith assurance that the overhaul would run consumers just pennies in added fuel costs. After a Department of Transportation whistleblower’s refusal to “jimmy the numbers,” WSDOT, Ecology, and the Governor’s Office of Financial Management, through their joint Transportation Revenue Forecast Council, revised-up the per-gallon cost from Inslee’s mere “pennies” to somewhere in the range of 45 to 50 cents per gallon. That’s a lot of pennies!!
It is a tale as old as time. Leaders make big promises. Some deliver while others fail. The costs of dashed promises can be enormous or small—from the collapse of a civilization to a marginal increase in the price of a loaf; though it bears noting that the French Revolution may have begun with a peasant-woman’s protest of rising bread costs, in response to which Marie Antoinnette notoriously (though probably apocryphally) advise to “let them eat cake.”
Thankfully, in a democratic-republican society like ours, we have peaceful means through which to hold our leaders accountable. CADF, WPC, and others sounding the alarm can only give you the numbers, however—again, those that Olympia don’t manage to obfuscate or obscure.
It is up to you, dear reader, to blow that clarion among friends, family, and colleagues. The CCA will fail. And without popular pushback, we will all have egg on our faces.
Alki,
Sam Spiegelman