For an Olympia neophyte, you couldn’t get a better glimpse of the divergent views of Washington state’s economic future than what was offered in two events Tuesday morning.

At 10 a.m., Kris Johnson, president of the Association of Washington Business, and Roundtable President Steve Mullin were stressing the fundamentals of state government’s economic inputs as they announced the launch of Opportunity Washington. They advocated for improving the public school system, including higher education, and funding highway expansion and maintenance to ease the flow of commerce.

L-R: Washington Research Council’s Lew Moore, AWB’s Kris Johnson, Roundtable President Steve Mullin

At 11 a.m., a very different coalition gathered in the basement of the Pritchard Library to kick off the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy, a collaboration of labor and environmental groups devoted to doing some of the same things the business-backed initiative would, such as funding schools and transportation, but in a markedly different way.

The difference? That came up at 1:30 p.m., in the first hearing on the bill for Gov. Jay Inslee’s cap-and-trade program. If implemented, it would start in 2016 and generate $1 billion annually, mostly for education and transportation, by levying taxes on the carbon pollution put out by manufacturing firms, oil refineries, utilities, and others.

Industry leaders testified that cap-and-trade would send them scurrying for other, less tax-intense states; a representative of Seattle-based Nucor Steel said cap-and-trade would mean a $3 million annual tax increase for a company competing in global markets. Inslee climate policy staffer Chris Davis testified to the effects of climate change that are already bearing down on Washington, such as more intense wildfires, and managing water shortages.

On the morning after the November election last year, Inslee told a conference of renewable-energy advocates that Washington had reached a “Grand Coulee moment” in energy policy.

He predicted a shift from a fossil-fuel based economy to one reliant on clean sources such as wind and solar, of more electric vehicles sharing the highways, and a carbon-emissions reduction strategy that would usher in a new future for environmental policy in the state.

In the governor’s cap-and-trade proposal, Washington is confronting its legacy of cheap, abundant hydropower head on. The reliance on hydroelectricity makes Washington’s one of the cleanest economies in the U.S., as Johnson asserted in his testimony before the House Environment Committee.

But how does it move beyond that? And should it? Those are the two key questions looming over the cap-and-trade debate.

Each side is preparing for a lengthy debate over this. Mullin said business wants to see a comprehensive transportation package passed this session funded with revenue from the excise tax on gasoline.

“Our goal is to continue to remind folks about where we’re trying to go,” Mullin said. “It’s not a one-session strategy. Our commitment is to build a coalition.”

Jeff Johnson, president of the State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said a clean environment and a healthy economy don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

“We can do this by investing in modern transportation systems,” Johnson said. “We can have a clean environment and we can have good jobs.”

The House Environment Committee couldn’t take all the people who wanted to testify on cap-and-trade Tuesday, requiring another meeting to be held on Thursday.

It doesn’t appear that one session will have the answers for this. Senate Republicans said they’d hold a hearing on the cap-and-trade bill – if the House could pass it. It would take a major coup from the Senate Democrats or a sea-change of opinion from the Republicans for the bill to pass the upper chamber.

Johnson said as much in his testimony: that this was the beginning of the debate, not the end.

“This is probably the most important bill I will ever testify on,” Johnson said. “Climate change is truly an existential issue.”

The business side of the argument sees a proposal that would extract a billion dollars every year from about 100 companies and firms statewide, and barely move the needle on a warming climate globally.

“We have substantial concerns with a cap-and-trade proposal,” AWB’s Kris Johnson said. “This clearly ought to be done at a national level.”

Your support matters.

Public service journalism is important today as ever. If you get something from our coverage, please consider making a donation to support our work. Thanks for reading our stuff.