In a video that opens with shots of storm clouds gathering over the Seattle skyline, Inslee, 68, vowed to transition the nation to 100 percent renewable electricity and generate “millions of good paying jobs” in “every community across America.”
“We’re the first generation to feel the sting of climate change,” Inslee said over images of the charred rubble California’s unprecedented wildfires left behind last year. “And we’re the last that can do something about it.”
The website for the Inslee campaign features his policies centered on the economic benefits of renewable energy. His record in the State of Washington is filled with efforts to face this crisis while improving the economy and the environment:
Inslee's record on the issue stretches back to 2006, when, serving as one of Washington’s then-nine U.S. representatives, he led an effort to set a renewable portfolio standard in the Evergreen State. The next year, he co-authored a book called Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy, which, as the title implies, laid out a vision for bolstering the renewable-energy and electric-vehicle industries.
In 2009, Inslee helped start the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition in the House of Representatives. Later that year, he co-sponsored the failed federal cap-and-trade bill known as Waxman-Markey, the last major federal effort to cut planet-warming emissions.
In 2016, Inslee became the first governor to issue an executive order capping carbon dioxide emissions. A year later, he founded the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan interstate club aimed at maintaining the country’s climate negotiations with other countries after Trump announced the United States’ plan to withdraw from the Paris climate accords.
A glowing profile published in January in The Atlantic described Inslee’s array of state-level policies as “arguably the most progressive and greenest agenda in the country, with fields of solar panels, fleets of electric buses and massive job growth to show for it.”
That same month, Inslee pledged to reject donations from the fossil fuel industry, though this week his allies announced the formation of a super PAC, Act Now On Climate, to support his bid. The group is led by former Democratic Governor’s Association political director Corey Platt.
Inslee took firm stances against major fossil fuel infrastructure projects. In January 2018, he personally intervened to reject permits to build what would have been the country’s largest oil-by-rail facility at the Port of Vancouver. He signed a bill last March putting a new tax on pipelines, requiring the operators to fund a state program to safeguard against oil spills. In May, he blocked construction of a $680 million coal-export terminal on the Columbia River.
But his signature climate effort ― a plan to put a price on carbon emissions ― failed three times in Washington. The most recent attempt, a proposal called Initiative 1631 and widely considered a state-level version of a Green New Deal, lost in a November referendum after the oil industry spent a record $31 million pressuring Evergreen State voters to reject the ballot measure. E&E News in January dubbed the vote the latest in a series of “spectacular failures while achieving just a few minor victories.”
Climate Change polls as the #2 issue for Democrats behind health care. Both issues are linked due to the health risks increased by our carbon emissions. By making Climate Change his central issue, Inslee will raise the focus on the issue to everyone’s benefit.
In 2 years the impact of Climate Change will increase and hopefully America will wake up and understand the dire consequences of any failure to make it what it is: A REAL NATIONAL EMERGENCY — a real planetary emergency.
Please visit the Inslee campaign website and sign up with a donation. No matter who is your preferred candidate any effort that raises the awareness of Americans to the Climate crisis is a very good thing.