Washington’s governor dishes on the Green New Deal, the filibuster, and more.
After years on the periphery of American political life, climate change is having a bit of a moment. Activists (along with five Democratic presidential candidates and at least 100 members of Congress) have rallied behind a Green New Deal that proposes a crash program to decarbonize the US economy. Polls on climate change show rising rates of concern across the country and among both political parties. It seems that, after decades near the bottom of Democratic priority list, climate has broken into the top two or three.
Washington governor Jay Inslee, who will announce his presidential candidacy this morning, is hoping seize that moment. Over the course of his 30-year career in public life — first in the Washington state legislature, then in the House of Representatives, then, since 2012, governor of Washington state — he has always prioritized sustainability, and not always to his political benefit. Now he sees his signature issue and the national zeitgeist aligning at last, and he thinks it can take him to the White House.
In 2007, Inslee released a book (co-written with Bracken Hendricks) called Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy. It called for a broad suite of emission-reducing policies, led by massive investments in American clean-energy jobs, with a focus on environmental justice. If that sounds familiar, well, they didn’t call it a Green New Deal, but it was pretty green, and pretty New Deal.
Now, to his delight, a youth movement has thrust a similar plan into the center of national debate. He thinks he’s the guy to take it over the finish line.
Inslee’s life will soon involve a whirlwind of state fairs and high school gymnasiums across Iowa and New Hampshire, but earlier this week, when we met at a coffee shop (ironically called Voxx) in Seattle, he was relaxed, sipping tea, with little in the way of entourage. He’s a long-time devotee of Washington’s natural places and an avid hiker, and it shows. As a north Seattleite, I was a constituent of Inslee’s in the early 2000s and have covered his career since he first ran for the House; he’s a grandfather now, but aside from a few more grey hairs, at 68 he is as hale as ever, with an athletic build and a blunt, earnest energy.
He told me that climate change is his “driving motivation” and why he believes it can unite the party. We discussed the kind of procedural reforms that might be necessary to actually get climate legislation passed — he calls the Senate filibuster an “antebellum rule in the internet age” and wants to get rid of it, has signed Washington up to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and supports statehood (and thus Senate votes) for Puerto Rico and Washington, DC.
And we discussed his record in (and plans for) our home state of Washington, including the vexing recent failures of two climate change ballot initiatives. (“If we had an initiative on the ballot that said, ‘Washington State should move on climate change,’ that would’ve passed.”)
At the end of our interview, as he rose to leave, a woman named Janine approached Inslee and introduced herself. “I’m very proud to have you,” she said. “We need someone out here for climate change.”
Inslee glanced at me and smiled. “Janine’s not on our payroll.”
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Why do you want to be president?
Ultimately, 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.
That is the only way we will be victorious in this fight. And I believe I’m uniquely positioned, by willingness and history and vision, to be able to do that. So I do feel compelled to do it. On my last day, I want to be able to say I did everything I could on [climate change].
So you’re building your campaign on climate change?
That is my driving motivation. I have many things that I care about in life — from criminal justice reform to pay equity, minimum wage, ending the death penalty, passing net neutrality, reproductive parity — and I’ve done all of those things in my state. I’d like to do them in our country.
But we have to have to have a priority on [climate change]. I’ve been at this for two decades. I understand the challenges inherent in getting this job done. It is a big, heavy lift. There’s many things that will help — improving voting rights, ending the filibuster, many structural things that will help — but you still have to have that presidential leadership. It will only happen if we have a leader who will prioritize it, who will develop a mandate during a campaign to do it (having that mandate is very important), and use the political capital necessary to get it done.
Do you believe Obama did not personally put enough political capital behind the 2008 climate bill?
This is not to be critical, it’s just an observation: the Democratic team said, “we’re going to do healthcare 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 healthcare 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. I feel uniquely committed to that, among all of the potential candidates, and I understand what’s necessary to do it.
It does seem that climate politics are shifting on the Democratic side. Do you think the party’s moving in the right direction on this?
Yes, absolutely. And the politics have changed dramatically in the general citizenry. This used to be a chart, or a graph. When I wrote my book, 11 years ago, it was a numbers discussion.
Now it’s a Paradise, California burning down. Kids can’t go swimming because of air quality. Houston is drowned, Miami Beach has to raise their roads. This is now a retinal issue. People see it, they don’t have to intellectually project the future.
The Center for American Progress [Action Fund] did a poll in the first four primary states, among likely Democratic voters, and for the first time, they ranked climate change as the number one priority, in a dead tie with health care. This is a pretty significant dynamic. And obviously it bodes well for my candidacy!
The conventional wisdom in US politics is that you can get relatively high numbers of people to say they care about climate change, but they rarely prioritize it. How can you take an issue that’s way down on the list and ride it all the way to the White House?
The answer is the poll I just mentioned. It’s top of the list. This is objective evidence of what I’ve felt anecdotally. When traveling around New Hampshire and Iowa, the intensity of this issue is five, ten time higher than it was when I wrote my book.
