Ezra Klein: The case for Jay Inslee [View all]

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The case for Jay Inslee
Inslee is the only candidate treating climate change the way the science says climate change should be treated.
By Ezra Klein@ezraklein May 13, 2019, 9:30am EDT

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As he told my colleague Dave Roberts, “I believe there is one central, defining, existential-with-a-capital-E threat to the future of the nation: climate change. It is clear that it will only be defeated if the United States shows leadership. And that will only happen if the US president makes it a clear priority — the number one, foremost, paramount goal of the next administration.”

Climate change isn’t a concern Inslee picked up just in time for the 2020 presidential race. In 2009, when he was a member of the House, he co-authored a book with energy expert Bracken Hendricks called Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy, and wrote ambitious legislation trying to make his vision reality.

Inslee is a two-term governor of Washington state — he took office in 2013 and is term-limited out in 2020 — and the Republican attack line on him has been that the only thing he cares about is climate change. It’s the kind of insult that’s also, sort of, a compliment.

Inslee supported the state’s recent carbon tax ballot initiatives (both failed) and has tried several times to pass carbon pricing bills through the legislature, only to be thwarted. But he kept at it, and this session (finally working with a Democratic majority in both houses), he shepherded through a range of ambitious bills on clean electricity, clean buildings, electric vehicles, banning hydrofluorocarbons, and boosting energy efficiency standards.

Inslee’s single-mindedness, even in the face of past failures, is important. A persistent problem in climate change politics is that Democrats pay lip service to the existential threat but prioritize kitchen table issues with faster political payoff. By the time they turn back to climate, if they turn back to climate, they’ve long since lost the capital necessary for the fight. Inslee made this point in an accurate assessment of Barack Obama’s first term:

The Democratic team said, “We’re going to do health care first.” And so climate didn’t get done. Now, could it have gotten done if it was put first? There are no guarantees in the historical retrospectoscope. But once health care went first, there wasn’t enough juice to get climate through.

We simply cannot have that experience again. So [climate change] can’t be on a laundry list. It can’t be something that candidates check the box on. It has to be a full-blooded effort to mobilize the United States in all capacities.

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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/5/13/18564548/jay-inslee-2020-democrats-climate-change-science