He may have dropped out of the race, but Inslee is more powerful than ever. In an interview with Vanity Fair, the climate change warrior discusses why hurricanes are getting more dangerous and why it might take abolishing the Senate filibuster to beat Mitch McConnell.
~ Abigail Tracy, Vanity Fair
Abigail Tracy of Vanity Fair interviewed Governor Jay Inslee this past month about “climate change, the remaining presidential field, and what another four years of Donald Trump would mean for the environment.”
Abigail Tracy: The Democratic presidential field has unveiled climate change plans with price tags ranging from $1.7 trillion for Joe Biden to $16 trillion for Bernie Sanders. I think your’s was in the $9 trillion range. What would you tell people suffering from sticker shock over these cost estimates?
Jay Inslee: The most expensive plan that has been proposed is Donald Trump’s. It is several factors more expensive than any other plan proposed by any of the other candidates. Because his plan proposes to spend trillions and trillions of dollars in health care costs that are rising because of climate change, and trying to replace the damage from the increasing forest fires that are literally burning down whole towns, and trying to help the agricultural community that was flooded and will be more frequently in the Midwest, and try to respond to the increasing damage of the hurricanes, one of which we’re seeing right now off the coast of North Carolina.
That is the plan that just costs too much. It will bankrupt America.
Governor Inslee had warm words for the entire field of candidates, eight of whom have consulted with him about climate. He was pleased at the adoption of parts of his plan by essentially all the candidates; however, he reserved special praise for Senator Elizabeth Warren:
I think the thing that was most impressive to me was the sector-by-sector approach that Senator [Elizabeth] Warren addressed. That was the first time other candidates have embraced the idea that I’ve been pounding on the entire campaign, and that to me was the most demonstrative of a willingness to really go the last mile to get this job done.
snip
I think this willingness to actually adopt a regulatory approach on a sector-by-sector program, to me that was the biggest what I would consider breakthrough, that was offered by Senator Warren.
While acknowledging that his campaign helped push the climate crisis forward, he credits the youth rising up with their “unassailable moral high ground”, media beginning to bring it to light, and the simple fact that Americans are experiencing a “frequency of disasters”.
Concerning GOP pushback on plans to fight climate change, Governor Inslee is blunt:
They’re losing. The Republicans are losing this battle. I think the best recognition of this is Donald Trump’s own recognition of his weakness. What I mean by that is, he went out a few weeks ago and declared himself the world’s best environmentalist. You’d have to ask yourself, why would somebody say something that was so ludicrous and obviously detached from reality? The reason is that he and his team recognized is they’re hemorrhaging votes like crazy all across America, and this is his weakest point.
Governor Inslee remains steadfast on his call to kill the filibuster, once calling it a “vestage of an Antebellum era” which would “stop us from saving the planet”.
The climate change plan you proposed really hinges upon the elimination of the Senate filibuster.
We have to mobilize the entire United States economy to do this, and it’s virtually impossible if the filibuster exists. There’s a lot of executive actions that the president can take, but some of this is going to require action to go through the U.S. Senate. That’s impossible when you have Mitch McConnell, who’s called himself the Grim Reaper, holds the filibuster.
Governor Inslee compares the fossil fuel industry to the tobacco industry that falsified scientific information and pushed distraction to continue to reap their profits for as long as they could from their deadly products. He cautions us that the fossil fuel industry will do the same thing. (For the story behind his absolutely experience-based certainty of this, see We. Cannot. Work. It. Out. )