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Washington Gov. Jay Inslee: Climate Change Fight Continues, Even Without Trump | On Point

Washington

Gov. Jay Inslee speaks Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017, at the Cascadia Innovation Conference in Seattle. (Ted S. Warren/AP)

The governor of Washington state said Tuesday that President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord has only encouraged other countries to redouble their efforts to combat climate change.

Democrat Jay Inslee, in an interview on the NPR show On Point from the United Nations’ climate conference in Bonn, Germany, told host Tom Ashbrook that he was concerned by Trump’s decision at first: Would pulling out of the international climate change agreement encourage other countries to follow suit or slack off?

It’s done the opposite, Inslee said.

“They became more committed and more inspired when they saw the willful ignorance of the president on this issue,” Inslee said. “They actually have doubled down and there has not been one single country that has removed their name from Paris.”

Indeed, Inslee noted, Syria recently became the last country in the world to join the Paris climate agreement, a nonbinding pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

You can find the full episode here.

Inslee is part of the so-called United States Climate Alliance, a group of 15 states and two territories that Inslee said represented 40 percent of the U.S. economy – the world’s third largest, if it was its own country.

The group was there as a sort of shadow delegation to the climate conference.

It would be better, he said, if the Trump administration was on board, or if all 50 states, instead of 15, were part of the group. But technological innovations in things like solar will help light the future, Inslee said – signing off with the admonition to “have faith.”

“We’re developing technologies at a spectacular rate to drive down the costs of clean energy that could remove the necessity of depending on dead dinosaurs to run our economy,” Inslee said.

The U.S. Is Tackling Global Warming, Even if Trump Isn’t – NYTimes.com

By MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG and JERRY BROWN

November 14, 2017

World leaders have been meeting in Bonn, Germany, since last week to discuss carrying out the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Sadly, though not unexpectedly, the White House and federal agencies have largely been absent from the negotiating table. But American leaders from state capitols, city halls and businesses across the country have shown up in force, and we have delivered a unified message to the world: American society remains committed to our pledge under the agreement.

Over the past two months, Americans have experienced or witnessed raging wildfires and devastating storms, from Santa Rosa, Calif., to San Juan, P.R. Warming seas, along with hotter and drier days, make these storms and fires more intense and destructive. Climate change is not a future threat; it is happening now, and we are paying for it in lost lives and billions of dollars in damage.

The United States has always led the way in confronting global challenges, especially ones that profoundly affect our own country. President Trump’s vow to withdraw from the Paris agreement by 2020 was a troubling abdication of that leadership, and it threatened to send a dangerously wrong message: that we are abandoning the pledge we made in Paris to reduce emissions at least 26 percent by 2025.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Most Americans strongly support the Paris agreement, and thousands of mayors, governors, chief executives and others stepped forward to reaffirm their commitment to it after the president walked away from the accord. Together, these states, cities and businesses constitute more than half of the United States economy and, if they were a separate country, would make up the third-largest economy in the world.

...(read more).