Climate change, Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee likes to say, “is the challenge of our time.”
On Monday afternoon, while virtually speaking to students from six campuses across the state, including Washington State University Vancouver, Inslee told the college students: “Your generation gets it.”
But as a student from Washington State University Spokane pointed out to the governor, his generation also understands their list of challenges is long.
“Our country is a trillion dollars in debt. People in Africa still don’t have access to clean drinking water. Radical Islam impedes our freedom everyday. Veterans aren’t getting the care they need. Children are hungry across America every night. People want to kill you, me, everybody here because we are American,” the student said. “Are you still going to tell me climate change is the biggest problem our generation is going to face?”
So much for softball questions.
OK, Inslee conceded, there is a litany of challenges facing the younger generation. Inslee even added another challenge: student debt.
But, the governor said, veering back to his climate change campaign, this “is a challenge everyone will share across the country, and it will go on for decades.”
“That’s why I think it’s the most challenging and it’s a very large transformation of our economy, from one based on fossil fuels to one based on newer, cleaner energy sources. That’s an enormous transition.”
Inslee, who is expected to run for re-election in 2016, recently returned from the United Nations Climate Change Convention in Paris, where he told the students the world “took a big step forward.”
“For the first time, the world began a united effort in pushing the ‘go’ button to say we should deal with climate change,” Inslee said.
The world decided “we’re going to face the facts and scientific reality of climate change, and we’re going to do something about it.”
It was only a step, Inslee said, “not some magic pixie dust we’re going to spread around the world that will solve climate change.”
This is why now is the time to act, the governor said, and pointed to the carbon cap policy he is working on with the state’s Department of Ecology.
And which is also why, Inslee told the students, “the world needs you like you can’t imagine.”
“This is the generation that really does understand the future you’re looking at,” he said.
Lauren Dake: 360-735-4534; twitter.com/LaurenDake; lauren.dake@columbian.com
