(CN) – Democratic presidential hopeful and Washington Governor Jay Inslee on Friday released a 10-year clean energy plan that he says would put the country on track to meet the stringent deadline that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in a 2018 report was necessary to avoid catastrophe.
Inslee, who is running for president on a climate-focused agenda, said the first leg of his platform would slash emissions and get the country to 100% clean electricity by 2030 by modernizing the transportation sector, the electricity grid and building codes which together account for almost 70% of carbon emitted in the United States.
At a press conference Friday morning in Los Angeles, Inslee said he would soon release additional sections of his climate plan with details about how much his plan will cost, how it will spur job creation, environmental justice and equity in workforce, and how he would direct industry to focus on innovation.
Standing next to L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, the governor did not mince words.
“Right now our nation faces a choice – a choice of grasping the last chance, of marshalling the best in America and the determination of America, or to take rank with those souls who would have us exist in the gray shadow of passivity and half measures,” he said. “We know this: America is not a nation of half measures. We did not go half way to the moon. We did not defeat half of fascism. When we face a challenge, we defeat it.”
If elected president, Inslee says he will “mimic actions taken in Washington state,” where the Legislature just passed a suite of climate-related bills, including one that aims to get the state to 100% carbon neutral by 2030 and 100% clean energy by 2045.
But while state lawmakers did pass significant climate legislation in April, Inslee has been governor since 2013. And during those five years, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise in Washington state.
Inslee said the state’s rebounding economy was to blame.
“We’ve had a significant decline in emissions, or at least a plateau, during the recession,” Inslee told Courthouse News at an April 8 press conference. “Because the recession reduced economic activity, which reduced burning fossil fuels. Now we’ve had a huge economic boom in our state, which has brought in hundreds of thousands of people with their cars since the recession. Consequently, there has been some increase in carbon dioxide gases associated with a huge, booming economy.”
His response illustrated the main theme of his candidacy for president. During his 23 years in politics, Inslee has straddled industry and the environment with the unyielding vision that a thriving economy doesn’t have to steamroll its most vulnerable participants and ruin the planet. He has publicly advocated for a major movement tying the economy to the environment for over 15 years. He positions climate change as an opportunity for America to lead the world in green technology, with all the jobs and economic growth that would entail.
“There are a lot more jobs in fighting climate change than there are in denying it,” he often says.
The son of a Seattle high school teacher and a Sears sales clerk, Inslee grew up going on group trips to clean up trash on Mt. Rainier. He got a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Washington and a law degree from Willamette University. Then he went to work as a prosecutor with the law firm Peters, Schmalz, Leadon & Fowler in rural Selah, Washington.
With tours as a state legislator, congressman, regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton and, most recently, two terms as governor, he’s been in politics for over two decades.