As Jay Inslee sees it, the immovable object is starting to budge.
“I think there’s been remarkable changes in the past decade on this issue,” Washington’s two-term Democratic governor says. “I think the public is understanding what we can do to create a clean-energy economy. What was exotic 10 years ago is now commonplace.”
Inslee is conducting a phone interview in advance of a recent visit to Vancouver. And he’s talking about climate change.
Of course he is. Since making climate change and clean energy the foundation of his initial run for governor eight years ago, Inslee has turned into a full-fledged climate evangelist as he manages the final year of his second term and prepares to campaign for a third term.
Like any evangelist, he is followed by a combination of full-throated believers, recent converts, and skeptics. And, like any tent-stop preacher, he continues to expound the gospel that informs his beliefs.
“The other change,” he says, “unfortunately is that what I thought was going to happen is happening. We have Dungeness crabs that can’t grow shells because of ocean acidification. And the California wildfires and Australian fires — we had half a continent burning. And now the locusts — cue the locusts — in Africa.” In case you missed it, East Africa is suffering from a plague of locusts, which devastate crops and might or might not be a warning of Biblical proportions.
