Agenda for Th meeting downtown 12-1pm

Hey everyone: Here's a tentative agenda for Thursday's meeting, which is 12-1pm in the 5th floor conference room at 1402 3rd Ave downtown. Hope to see you there!

* Updates (5 minutes): News about WCI, federal action, stakeholder meetings, etc. FYI, here's my update in a nutshell: I've gotten a good response from some green energy Venture Capital folks and a UW student group (UW SEED), a less good response from some environmental groups---having lost the battle at the state level, they have apparently decided to join the battle at the federal level---and am looking forward to discussions in the next week or two with some social justice folks, with some folks connected to big business, and with economic researchers at RFF who are going to tell us about impacts on different income deciles.

* Policy (15 minutes): Here's an updated spreadsheet that includes stronger GHG targets (which makes our revenue estimates more conservative), a lower initial tax rate, and rate increases of inflation plus 5% annually: carbonwa7.xls. It hasn't changed that much from the previous version (carbonwa6.xls), and I look forward to hearing your thoughts, but my 2 cents are that the changes make it more stable in the long-run and more politically attractive in the short-run (e.g., by starting at $30 per ton rather than $50 per ton we can truthfully say that we're just mimicking the carbon tax already in place in British Columbia).

* Website (15 minutes): After a long delay I think we need to get cracking again on having a bare-bones but functional website, so let's talk about who our target audience is and what we need on the website and how to get it done.

* Outreach (15 minutes): I've drafted an email (copied below) to start drumming up support for signature-gathering, and I'm looking for feedback.

* Next steps (10 minutes): To-do list and next downtown meeting Th June 4 from 12-1pm.

Let me know if you have additions/corrections/suggestions for the meeting agenda, and if you can't make the meeting but want to chime in via email please do!

HERE'S THE DRAFT EMAIL (written from my perspective but not hard to modify):

Hi [Pat]: I hope you're enjoying this spring and summer, and I want you to keep enjoying it, but I'm writing to ask for some of your time next spring and summer, i.e., about 10 months from now. Here's the skinny:

* Climate change is not going away, so I'm part of a group that is determined to push a ballot measure here in Washington State if state and federal action continues to stall. Getting on the ballot in November 2010 would mean gathering signatures in February-June 2010, so I'm asking for your help to make that happen. (You'd also be helping one of my dreams come true: I've been serious enough about this that I've practiced over the past few years by personally gathered about 900 signatures each year for a ballot measure I support :)

* We're still working on the policy details, but the gist of it will be (1) imposing a carbon tax of $30-50 per ton of CO2, which amounts to about $0.30-$0.50 per gallon of gasoline or about $0.03-$0.05 per kWh of coal-fired power; (2) using the majority of the revenue to repeal the state portion of the property tax; and (3) using a smaller portion of the revenue to offset impacts on low-income households and perhaps also reduce business taxes and/or increase funding for clean energy research and for K-12 math/science education. Some details are online at www.ourwebsite.org, and FYI this proposal is roughly similar to the award-winning carbon tax currently in effect in British Columbia.

* I am asking for you to commit to gathering 900 signatures between early February 2010 and late June 2010. This will not be super-easy, but it will also not be impossible: at an average signature-gathering rate of 25 signatures per hour (or 100 in a 4-hour shift), that means finding nine friends to join you for just a single 4-hour shift, or finding three friends to join you for three 4-hour shifts, or doing nine 4-hour shifts on your lonesome (which is mostly what I've done during my volunteer efforts these last few years, and it's really not that bad :). And of course we'll provide you with training and lists of good signature-gathering locations &etc... all we need is your time and enthusiasm!

* Just for the record, what I am really asking for is an _option_ on your time and enthusiasm: If federal or state action makes the ballot measure unnecessary, or if we fail to interest enough people in the ballot measure, you'll be free to devote your time and enthusiasm elsewhere. But we'd like to count on your participation IF we can drum up a critical mass of support and IF there is no state or federal action by early 2010.

Let me know if you have any questions, let me know if you're game, and thank you!

yoram