Jay Inslee, gubernatorial wannabe. Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.
With Gov. Chris Gregoire’s (D) announcement that she will not seek reelection in 2012, Rep. Jay Inslee (D) has emerged as the frontrunner to get the Democratic nomination for the Washington governorship. Inslee is one of the fiercest climate hawks in the nation, leading Congress in the fights against climate pollution and to build a clean energy economy. Since 2003, he has fought for a new Apollo-style mission to mobilize the entire nation for clean energy. In 2009, Inslee cofounded the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, because of the need for “bold, aggressive action” to fight the climate crisis. And he has been one of the strongest defenders in the nation of science, scientists, and the American dream against climate polluters and their right-wing allies, as these ThinkProgress videos show:
April 2011: “Shutting down the government is not a solution. Shutting down the EPA is not a solution. Shutting down American innovation is not a solution.”
April 2010: “Mine safety is as silly as global warming — they’re both deadly serious and they’re not silly at all.”
March 2010: “I would counsel people who don’t want to move on this to just get over their fear. Because frankly it’s fear that’s holding back. It’s people who are afraid that Americans aren’t smart enough to invent new technologies to deal with that. That we’re not bold enough like we used to be when we went to the moon with the original Apollo project.”
Dec. 2009: “It’s troublesome to me that people who put man on the moon, people who discovered water on the moon, the people who are doing great research figuring out how the oceans are acidic, some of whom are my constituents — it’s disturbing to me that people would come to this chamber and call them fascists!”
Oct. 2009: “You can’t solve ocean acidification without controlling CO2 and yet people are still trying to write books to deceive the American public. And we ought to blow the whistle on them, we’re blowing the whistle on one today, we’ll continue to do it, because ultimately science is going to triumph in this discussion.”
