If Initiative 1631 fails, on the other hand, it would suggest that ambitious climate policy cannot find a winning coalition, even in one of the most outdoorsy states in the union. Its defeat would provide yet another example of how—even as the list of President Donald Trump’s unpopular environmental rollbacks grows by the month—blue states cannot actually convert their confessed concern for the natural world into the muscular work of government.

I first wrote about Initiative 1631 in August. Since then, a few factors have changed in the race. Oil money has swamped Washington: A handful of companies and industry lobbyists have given tens of millions of dollars to the “No on 1631” effort, making it the richest ballot-initiative campaign in state history. Meanwhile, local papers disagree on the referendum’s merits: The Seattle Times and Tri-City Herald have opposed 1631; The Olympian and Tacoma’s News Tribune support it. (A reputable local paper in New York City has also enthusiastically endorsed the referendum.) Public-opinion polls seem to be similarly split.

A few years ago, researchers at Yale and George Mason University surveyed the nation and found that most Americans—almost 60 percent of them, in fact—believed “global warming will harm people in the United States.” A majority said that climate change was already hurting Americans. But when asked if “global warming will harm me, personally,” the numbers plummeted. Sixty percent of Americans swore that climate change would never hurt them.

This more or less mirrors the situation in Washington State, according to the same study. Most Washingtonians say that climate change is already hurting people in the United States. But three out of every five state residents also say that climate change will never affect them.

Washingtonians have many good reasons to conclude they’re safe. Secure in the country’s northwest corner, the Evergreen State seems far from the deadly hurricanes or oppressive humidity that dominate coverage of the crisis. Yet those Washingtonians are, alas, wrong. 2015 was the warmest year ever recorded in Washington; eight of its 10 warmest years on record have come in the past three decades. Wildfires, which do seem to be worsened by climate change, have poisoned Seattle’s air for two summers running. Climate change is even exacerbating declines in the state’s wild salmon population.

And climate change is being felt in smaller ways, too. Sheltered by the Cascades and fanned by sea breezes, the state’s West coast normally enjoys chilly summer nights. Just ask Karin Bumbaco, who moved to Seattle a decade ago and left behind the air conditioner she had owned in New York. “For nine years, I was fine without it,” she told me.

But summertime nightly lows have been soaring in the state, at a rate of half a degree Fahrenheit per decade. This year, she finally gave in and installed a unit in her daughter’s bedroom. “I was more concerned, having a toddler, given the dangers of sleep in really warm temperatures,” she said. “People on the East Coast will laugh—our nightly temperatures are still in the mid-to-upper 60s—but it’s not enough to cool down the inside of houses and apartments.” Bumbaco is the assistant state climatologist.