Former Washington state Sen. Reuven Carlyle created a new name for a hard-to-explain government program to fight climate change.
His rebranding of carbon markets as “cap and invest,” a name emphasizing the importance of spending revenues on emissions-reduction efforts, quickly became the favored term when he coined it in 2019. It spread from Washington state to New York, Maryland, Vermont and other states as they considered enacting similar programs.
Now California, the most populous state with the world’s fourth-largest economy, is adopting the moniker. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday he plans to rename the state’s landmark cap-and-trade program that’s been operating since 2013.
“Cap-and-Invest is the next chapter for one of our most effective tools to clean the air and keep our communities healthy,” Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement. “We’re going to make polluters pay for solutions to the climate crisis they helped create” by funding projects that include fire protection and prevention operations, and the state’s planned high-speed rail line.
