Mr. Inslee, the governor of Washington, is making a bold bet: that a singular focus on climate change can win him the Democratic nomination.
Single-issue voters are common enough. Single-issue candidates are unicorns.
This hasn’t deterred Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, who entered the presidential race on Friday on a bold bet: that a singular focus on combating climate change can distinguish him in one of the largest Democratic fields ever.
Here is a look at what Mr. Inslee wants to do about the climate, as well as other significant issues, even if he doesn’t emphasize them in his campaign.
Projections on the effects of climate change are increasingly dire, and Mr. Inslee argues that combating it should take precedence over all else — though he rejects the premise that it can be neatly separated from other issues to begin with. Extreme weather has exacerbated refugee crises and fueled immigration, for instance. Heat waves and poor air quality affect health.
Mr. Inslee has praised the Green New Deal — a sweeping proposal by some Democrats in Congress that, among many other environmental and economic goals, calls for a fully renewable energy supply within 10 years — for elevating public discussion of climate change and acknowledging the scale of the action needed. But he has also described it as more of an “aspirational” outline of principles than a policy document.
His environmental policy record in his home state is long. In 2015, he ordered Washington’s Department of Ecology to impose a cap on carbon emissions. He created a fund for clean energy, and the state now has extensive solar energy infrastructure and electric buses.
