By James Hohmann / The Washington Post
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who is poised to formally announce that he is running for president as early as this week, has held elected office since before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 29, was born.
Though he said it has felt lonely at times, the 68-year-old Democrat has been trying to do something about global warming for almost that entire time. He’s learned more from his failures than his successes. Now he hopes that Democratic primary voters come to value hard-earned wisdom.
Every 2020 candidate is talking extensively about climate change in his or her stump speech, but no one else has made it the central rationale for seeking the presidency. “I’ve got three grandkids, and I want them to experience what I have: salmon in the river, snow in the mountains, clean air and forests to hike in,” he said in an interview this weekend at the National Governors Association winter meeting. “It’s all going to be degraded if we don’t take this battle on.”
As a congressman, Inslee was a key player in the push for a cap-and-trade system 10 years ago. A bill passed in the House but stalled in the Senate, even though Democrats had a near-filibuster-proof majority.
Last March, Inslee fought hard but failed to enact the nation’s first carbon tax in Washington state. He couldn’t whip the votes to pass the bill through his state’s Democratic-controlled legislature. This past November, voters in his state rejected a ballot initiative to impose a carbon fee on fossil fuel emissions. A separate push he spearheaded to cap emissions was blocked in the courts.
Inslee said “perseverance” is his single greatest personal quality. “You have to realize it’s a necessary quality to achieve any major social change,” he said. “Suffragettes understood that. … You have to just keep plugging away at it. Sometimes perseverance is more important than genius.”
Inslee said he “welcomes” Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal for its ambition and for drawing attention to his pet issue, but he said there’s not really a plan for him to endorse. “This was not a policy document. It was really not meant to be,” he said. “So now people like me will issue policies to actually put meat on the bones.”
Republicans have warned in apocalyptic terms that the resolution could take away people’s cars and even lead to killing cows. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is moving to hold a show vote to force Democrats to take a position on the resolution. Inslee said Republicans are using scare tactics that remind him of the debate over Obamacare.
“It’s just death panels all over again,” he said. “They squawk … and they make up stuff out of thin air, just like they did on health care, and then we win. I believe, and I hope, it will be the same result on climate change.”
During our conversation at the Marriott Marquis, I noted that Democrats lost the House in 2010 after they passed the Affordable Care Act and that several congressmen lost their seats specifically because they walked the plank to vote for cap-and-trade system during the same Congress. “Timing is everything — in comedy and politics,” he said.
Inslee explained that he’s cleareyed about what’s realistic. He does not think getting to a carbonless economy in a decade is doable. After his defeats of the past decade, the governor also no longer advocates for a carbon tax or a carbon-pricing system.
“I’m proposing alternatives,” he said. “What’s important to realize is this other assortment of tools in the toolbox can achieve the same carbon reduction as a carbon charge. There’s a lot of routes to this destination.”
When cap-and-trade failed in 2010, Inslee argued that “it was just a line on the graph.” Now people experience more frequent fires, flooding and hurricanes, plus worse air quality, so it feels real and thus they’re inclined to act.
While the general idea of action is popular, specific steps can generate backlash. During our interview, I noted that the mass yellow vest protests in Paris over the past few months started because of public outcry over France imposing a new tax to fight climate change. Inslee emphasized that this is partly why he does not advocate carbon taxes.
“Look, we’ve got a suite of policies that are available to us, not just carbon pricing,” he said. “In my state, we’ve got five bills in the legislature that are all moving forward with the goal of 100 percent clean energy… . We’ve learned that we have multiple tools, not just one. There are a lot of different ways to skin this cat.”
Inslee’s decision to go all in on climate is certainly calculated, but it’s not craven. This is not some election-year conversion. Back in 2007, Inslee co-authored a 416-page book on this topic called “Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy.” Bill Clinton wrote the foreword.
Inslee pointed to a poll conducted this month by the Center for American Progress, a progressive advocacy group, that found “addressing the climate crisis” is tied with universal health-care coverage as the top priority among Democratic voters in the five early states.
Another poll this month from Saint Anselm College found that 88 percent of likely New Hampshire Democratic voters said they are more likely to support a candidate who advocates for the Green New Deal. That was a higher number than Medicare-for-all, regulating Wall Street, taxing the ultra-wealthy and providing tuition-free college.
A December poll from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found 69 percent of Americans are at least “somewhat” worried about climate change, up seven points from last March.
Inslee said he would be willing to declare a national emergency on climate change, allowing drastic federal action that could not pass Congress, if the Supreme Court upholds President Trump’s emergency declaration to build a wall on the southern border. The governor emphasized that he’s against Trump’s invocation of emergency powers and hopes it gets struck down. “But if the rules change and the circumstances change, we’re going to play by whatever rules exist to deal with this existential crisis,” he said. “So if the possibility exists, we’ll say yes.”
Inslee noted that he has made tangible, if incremental, progress as governor. Indeed, the Seattle Times Editorial Board praised him last month for trying to elevate the national conversation surrounding global warming and for his work to reduce emissions during six years as governor: “Inslee has a compelling story to tell about the state’s ability to grow its economy, increase education spending and host the nation’s two most valuable companies – all while reducing emissions, increasing use of renewable energy and enforcing strong regulations to protect the health of forests, waterways and air quality… .
“Inslee secured investments in clean-energy research, pushed to increase electric vehicle use in the state and co-founded a coalition of 17 governors working to uphold the Paris Agreement on climate-change goals. Energy related greenhouse-gas emissions in Washington declined 3 percent since their pre-recession high in 2007, despite population growth and the nation’s fastest economic growth in recent years. Emissions are expected to fall 5.5 percent by the time Inslee’s current term ends in 2020 … He’s been a strong advocate for private- and public-sector research and advanced product development. That includes championing state support for Boeing’s development of cutting-edge, fuel-efficient jetliners.”
Inslee has significantly more experience than most of his better-known rivals for the nomination. He got elected to the state House in 1988, won a U.S. House seat in 1992, lost reelection in 1994 because he voted for the assault weapons ban, battled his way back to Congress in 1998 and stayed there until he won the governorship in 2012. His second term wraps up at the end of 2020. Inslee also recently wrapped up a successful stint as the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.
Right now, however, he doesn’t register in the early polls.
But the governor said he’s accustomed to starting races as the underdog. He noted that he defeated a GOP incumbent to win his House seat and said he didn’t have support from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “They flew a guy out to Yakima to tell me they weren’t going to help me,” he recalled. “I said why didn’t you just call?”
— The Washington Post’s Joanie Greve and Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.
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