Jay Inslee Isn't Worried He's Lost His Edge as the Only Real Climate Candidate

[icymist]

When Washington Gov. Jay Inslee launched his long-shot presidential bid, he tried to distinguish himself from the pack of Democratic hopefuls by arguing that climate change was his top priority and should be the single most important issue for the next president. Anyone hoping to contain warming below catastrophic levels can’t simply treat it as a laundry list item, he argued, because of the widespread economic and global decisions required to bring down emissions and adapt to the impacts. Working to address climate change had to be the first priority of the next president—and not treated as an environmental niche—because it affects everything: economic inequality, racial justice, and health care.

But in the past few months, addressing climate change has become a higher priority for the Democratic base, and every Democratic presidential hopeful has promised aggressive action. Nearly everyone has backed some broad outline of a Green New Deal–type of investment in fighting climate change and pledged not to accept fossil fuel PAC money.

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Mother Jones: People keep referring to you as a single-issue candidate. I’ve heard you compared to Bernie Sanders, whose first campaign focused on economic inequality, or even Howard Dean, whose major issue in 2004 was opposition to the Iraq War. The result of their presence in the race was that they often forced others to address the issue they campaigned on. Do you consider your focus on addressing climate change comparable to this?

Jay Inslee: No. The thing you need to understand about climate change is it’s not one issue. It’s not a single issue. It’s all the issues. It’s not about the economy; it is the economy. It’s both the destruction of the economy from the fires and the floods, and it’s job-creating opportunities. It’s about health; it’s about the increasing asthma and infection diseases and heat prostration we face. It’s about national security.

You can hardly point to anything you care about and say it isn’t necessary to defeat climate change to protect it. So we can’t succeed on these other issues unless we defeat climate change, and for that reason this is a whole other situation. No, I’m not a single-issue candidate.

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/04/jay-inslee-isnt-worried-hes-lost-his-edge-as-the-only-real-climate-candidate/