Drama Queens - Work in Progress: Jay Inslee

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

The current administration's environmental rollbacks are certainly disheartening, but there are folks like Former Governor Jay Inslee who are on a mission to defeat climate change.  Environmental advocate Jay Inslee joins Sophia to talk about the ongoing fight to protect our environment, the future of clean energy production, his entry into politics in his 30s, and how he was able to pass one of the strongest clean energy laws in the country. Plus, he shares personal experiences with climate-related disasters, the power of perseverance, and his work in progress. This is a chat full of hope that we could all use right about now!To learn more about the power of clean energy and how you can get involved, head on over to climatepower.us(http://climatepower.us/)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey listeners, I'm just interjecting to let you know. This episode was recorded a few weeks ago, working with Governor Inslee around his incredibly busy schedule. And unfortunately, in the time between recording and this episode airing, the devastating floods have taken place in Texas. And we are just heartbroken for everyone in Mystic and everyone, everyone affected and it really drives home an unfortunate point. The climate crisis is making extreme weather

more frequent and more severe and the climate doesn't care where you live, how you voted, or if you believe in science. Science is here. We are particularly heartbroken knowing that the current administration in the White House has slashed funding and aid response from FEMA and other organizations that were meant to support victims of the flooding and that were meant to warn them in the hours before the floods hit. Slashing the National Weather Service is in our mind unforgivable. And we would just like to ask that if you agree or you feel similarly passionate about ensuring that people are safe, whether they're your next door neighbors or your neighbors a few states away. Please look up relief efforts for those affected. Please look up local organizations

wherever you live that are working to defend climate because those are the groups that we need now more than ever. And we are keeping everyone affected by this flood and the hurricane season to come in all of our thoughts here at work in progress. Thank you. Hello Whipsmarties. Do we ever have a wonderful big brain here with us today? I am so excited to be joined by Jay Inslee. He served as the 23rd governor of Washington State from 2013 to 2025 and has been one of our most effective leaders on climate. in America. He has proven that bold action on climate change is also incredibly successful economic policy. He made climate a central focus of his administration and pushed for and then implemented incredible clean energy legislation, promoted electric vehicle infrastructure, supported aggressive carbon reduction goals, and under his leadership, Washington State passed one of the nation's

strongest 100% clean energy laws aiming to eliminate coal power and transition to carbon-free energy by 2045. It is so cool to hear him talk about how he did it, how he organized folks across the political spectrum, and what it feels like when he meets with Washingtonians who get zero-dollar energy bills now. I think it's probably why he's often called our gold standard for climate platforms. and now post his gubernatorial tenure, he is working with an amazing group that I am lucky enough to collaborate with him on called climate power. I got to be honest, guys, I can feel a little doom and gloom about where climate policy is going to go under today's leadership. And this conversation with Governor Inslee really put me back in my hope. He reminded me of what we've

accomplished and what's to come and that this fight is absolutely not over. And I think that kind of inspiration is something we all need right now. So let's dive in with Governor Jay Inslee. Well, Governor, normally, when I sit down with guests, I'm well. Thank you. Good morning. I'm well. Thank you. Good morning. Well, Governor, normally, when I sit down with guests, You know, you've got really exciting things going on, whether it's work projects or, you know, your incredible political tenure. I'm actually quite curious. I like to go backwards before we really sit in the present. And I wonder for you as a public servant and an advocate, if you could go back in time and encounter yourself at, let's say, 10. Do you think you'd see yourself reflected in that boy? Not in the least because I was strong, vigorous.

The world was my oyster. I had not lost a campaign at that moment. No, I was at 10, I fell off my bicycle and broke my leg. I got a very bad break and really couldn't walk for several months. So I started reading. And I remember reading a book. I was going to be a nuclear physicist when I was 10 years of age. And I read a book about nuclear energy and was just fascinated by it.

So that was my ambition when I was 10, also to learn to walk again, which was maybe a formative experience. Because I had to go through several months of procedures. And it was a difficult time, but maybe an interesting. because I started to read. Maybe that's what caused my problems to make me going to politics. Why do you think you were so passionate about science as a young boy? Well, my father was a biology teacher. That might add something to do with it. And there was something in, and I just remember there was a diagram about how fission worked, about the splitting of the atom. And somehow that captured my imagination. And I think that the wonderful thing, about youth is your imagination is untrammeled. It's unconstrained. You know, society has not put any constraints on your imagination yet. So last night I was sitting out on my deck out here

watching the sunset. And I asked my two-year-old grandson, I said, how far away is the sun? Is that a long ways away or is it close? And he started like reaching out, like he could try to figure out how far way it was. And then he reached up to the sky and he says, I'm going to pull the sky down and make it a blanket. And he reached up to the blue sky. It's like he's reaching up and he was going to make the sky a blanket. You know, and you get older, you wouldn't be able to share that imagination because people would look at you a little strange. But as a child, you're free to roam. And so that's a wonderful thing about that part of life. Yeah. Free to imagine, really. Do you think that your time spent reading while healing launched your interest

in politics, or did that come later? Much, much later. I really, I've always been interested in public policy issues, but I did not see myself being involved in politics as an official until my mid-to- Upper 30s. And, you know, I was really interested in my community. affairs and kept abreast to what was going on in the nation. But the way I got involved in politics, that was a small town lawyer raising hay and three feral boys out in the central part of Washington State. And we tried to pass a school bond, Trudy and I, because it had failed five times. And they were going to have to start double shifting our kids.

We thought that that was nuts. So he said, let's go build a new high school. And no one else would town would try because they failed five times. And Trudy and I, another couple took it on. We got it passed. And as soon as we passed it, the chatter heads in the legislature changed the funding formula, and cut our state funding in half.

And I got outraged about that and went over and started to raise hell in Olympia in our capital. And eventually he said, well, if I'm going to do this, I might as well be in office. So I ran for office, one in a huge upset, a very, very Republican area against the sitting mayor and had no chance of winning. was in a legislature of two years and went to Congress. So that's my route, which was not preordained, predestined, or planned.

And here I am. Sometimes I think that's the best way, though. You know, people who see a problem and decide to run toward it when you want to fix something to ensure a better future for your kids and other people's kids. You know, I think there's a, I think there's such disdain for our political system. because we see so many people who get into it for self-interest and self-enrichment. And it's really a relief to be reminded that there are folks who do this because they actually want to serve the public. So it's nice to hear your story. When you look around

the landscape of, you know, the world you work in, why do you think younger generations seem so politically averse, you know, what do you think that is? Is it a disillusionment? Or is it that frustration with some of that kind of grift that we see in the political system? Why do you think so many young folks are hands-off? Well, I love young people. I'd like to be one, actually, someday. But I don't think, you know, if it's changed, I think that, you know, when you're 19, 20, 21, you just, you still don't have your feet under you. You're not connected to a particular community all the time. And you just haven't been hit with a mortgage rate interest, you know, raise. You haven't been hit by reality to some degree in that regard.

And there's a maturation project, you know, in a lot of. life. I hate to say it, but you do grow into things. And I don't think it's, I don't, I actually don't know the numbers, but I'm not sure it's changed dramatically as far as voting behavior for young people. It's always been lesser than people, you know, over 60. That's always been sort of the reality at this situation. I will say that the young voters that do vote and are active are so incredibly well informed and scientifically literate. and inspiring to those of us who've been around for a few decades. So we do everything humanly possible to get young people engaged because they're the smartest generation. And they have the most to lose, right? So, you know, how many years have I got? I don't know, but a 20-year-old's got several decades.

And if they lose the planet and a place to live and a healthy health system that takes care of them, they've got a lot more to lose. So we do everything we do to encourage them. We do have a higher voter participation of young and old in my state because we have one of, if not the best voting system because we vote by mail. It's very easy. We have same-day registration. We make it really easy to vote.

And it just drives me nuts when I see these other states, most of them run by the party that I don't belong to, that make people stand in line for three hours to vote. It's just nuts. So we do everything we can to increase voter participation. and we have one of the highest rates in the nation. Oh, I just love that. It is such an odd thing to watch, you know, one of our two parties really want to deny people the right to exercise their vote and their voice. And, you know, I will say one of the things that, not to say the two parties are the same,

but one of the things that really frustrates me is that we couldn't get our parties. better in line in the first two years of President Biden's term, the fact that we have not reinstated the John Lewis Voting Rights Act just makes me crazy. Look, I wish we'd solved all our problems why we had a majority. But you've got to understand, you're up against the filibuster in the Senate. Yep. And that's one of the frustrating things of the,

when you're in the minority party in either chamber, or even when you're in the majority party, excuse me, you have to realize you're up against filibuster to try to pass something like that. So unless you're willing to blow up the filibuster and I'm not a fan of the filibuster, if it was me, I probably would vote to end it, even though there's downsides

when here's a minority, obviously. But that prevents a lot of progress. And it is, you know, that is, you know, a cleavage between the two parties. So the Democratic Party is, for the last, you know, 150 years has stood for increasing, participation in our community decision making and the other party not so much they have

willfully in many occasions tried to make it more difficult and continue these efforts even today in a variety of ways with all kinds of tests and barriers and you know requiring you to go produce your birth certificate when you simply want to vote which is a real headache by the way because a lot of like 9 to 15 percent people literally can't find their documents on occasion so it's a serious issue. It's very disappointing that both parties can't be in favor of broadening the number of people who participate. To put a modality, I'm disappointed in them. You and me both, sir. We'll be back in just a minute after a few words from our favorite sponsors. It's interesting to me when I think about participation,

in the system in general and expanding people's access to weigh in on their future, it really makes me think a lot about climate. And, you know, you are one of our best leaders on climate change and on, you know, bolstering our power as a nation to deal with it and to take care of our people. How did you come to really focus on climate as a core issue for yourself? And what do you wish people better understood about it in the first place? Well, I think it's something deep like this. I'll try to give you a succinct answer of a complex problem. But basically, I really believe that your highest duty as a person is to those who are going to come behind you, our children, our grandchildren, our nieces, our nephews, our

neighbors, kids. I think that's our highest duty because keeping this chain of, this beautiful chain of humanity going in a healthy way and giving your kids what you've enjoyed is our highest duty. There's a lot of other duties in life that, you know, everybody would want to pass a car in a longer vacation. But that's the, in my book, in my value system, that's the number one duty of any person in any realm, no matter what you're doing. So it kind of stems from that. And I six grandchildren, and it is my deep, deep-seated, purple passion and desire for them to have what I've had, which is clean water to be able to drink and to swim in, snow in the mountains to ski on, air to breathe, it's not contaminated with forest fire and smoke. And I want

desperately, if I can use that word, to give my grandchildren those gifts. And they seem simple because I've always had them. But they're not going to have those gifts. of a less and healthy life, unless people of my age act to build a clean energy economy. And this is a very optimistic moment. I know this is very strange to say, given what the Republicans are trying to do. But we have such capability right now to do this, to use our heads. Solar and wind energy is now cheaper than coal power electricity, about 94% of the United States. We're building hundreds of thousands of jobs with clean energy jobs.

jobs, if we just use our heads in common sense, we can tame this beast and help our economy. So it's both a moment to think of our grandchildren and a moment to think of the economic benefits of clean energy and to be frankly outraged at what the Republicans want to do, which is to slow down this emerging rocket that's taken off in clean energy. And it's just so maddening as we speak that the Republicans are fashioning a bill that will, you know, have already cost maybe 90,000 jobs across the United States. I look at North Carolina. You know, Senator Tillis has a vote on this, and this bill, as drafted, would cost something like 45,000 jobs in North Carolina over the next several decades. Wow.

It's billions of dollars of investment. And, and here's a kicker, I think. There's actually been an assessment of this could result in utility bills going up $300 a month for the people in North Carolina because they no longer will have access to the cheapest source of electricity, which is electricity generated by renewable sources. So when they, out of ideology, do this, it's really quite maddening, given the pace of technology that is now available to us. So it's a good moment for voices to be heard to stand up for cheap energy, cheap electricity, thousands of jobs, and bonus, maybe our grandkids will have a place to live and breathe because this is a health issue as well. Well, that's just it.

You know, when I think about the cost of foregoing in our environment, you know, dirty air. Poisoned water doesn't care how you voted. It's going to affect all of us. And so it's certainly an environmental issue. It's also a moral issue. It's a human safety issue. And then, as you said, a financial one. You know, to see that since we started really investing in clean energy, you know,

there's a statistic I read recently that says three and a half million Americans have saved more than $8 billion thanks to, energy-efficient upgrades across the country, and that if they continue, that savings will increase to $38 billion by 2030. So when you say that this bill, you know, this reconciliation plan that they want to push through this big, awful bill, will destroy these things. I just think, well, who would want to set $38 billion on fire? Like, imagine what we could do with that money for, you know, upgrades and infrastructure and kids. It's like the insanity of having a dirtier world and wasting money just feels so ridiculous to me.

So why do you think they've worked so hard to make environmental issues, clean energy, the literal evolution of and innovation in technology seem like it's a partisan thing instead of just what we should be doing as a global power? Well, it's a very difficult question as to why people who are literate could shut their eyes to both the obvious threat

and the obvious benefits of clean energy. It's very difficult, but I'll give it my best shot to see where this comes from. Number one, you ask who these people are? These are people who are beholden to the fossil fuel industry. In the fossil fuel industries are the most powerful corporations in world history. They're much more powerful than the Medici's during the Italian period. So they're answering to their bosses, if you will, who are the people with the billions of dollars in an old, unfortunately, dirty industry that they are answering to.

Those are the people telling them out of vote. So that's number one. Number two, they've got a cult going on right now. where they've got a guy in the White House that somehow has a phobia about wind turbines. He says they cause cancer. Well, we know they don't cause cancer. They cause jobs. And he somehow, he didn't want to see a wind turbine within sight of his golf course and decided he wanted to destroy this entire industry.

It's nuts. But number three, there is a deeper reason if I can, it requires a little more thought to think about. It's fear. Fear is very powerful. And in their case, they are afraid that we can't solve this problem. They're afraid that we can't have a modern lifestyle by addressing this problem. And so they shut their eyes to it. It's like they want to put the monster in the closet.

You know, they get the monster in the closet. They don't want to let it out. Because they're afraid that we'll lose all of the modern benefits we have of having warmth in our house and food on the table and electronics at our disposal. And they don't see a vision that it can allow us to live that life. I do, and so many thousands and millions and the majority of Americans do, because we're now experiencing it. And the joy of this, it's the joy of clean energy. I remember talking to this woman, we got solar panels for her house.

We have a thing called the Climate Commitment Act, Washington State, and it generates money so we can help Washingtonians get access to clean energy. So she lives in Topinish, she gets up at 3 o'clock every morning, goes, picks apples, Topinish, Washington, and I met she and her daughter run their front yard looking up at her solar panels. And she said, I am, the best day of my month is the day I get my utility bills, because it's zero. She says it's like a gift every month. So we hear these stories of people getting heat pumps who've lowered their costs and have much more, you know, comfortable homes. And by the way, heat pump now gives you air conditioning, too. And we now need that in Seattle.

We never needed air conditioning until now. But now the heat domes are hitting us. Right. And it helps on air quality in so many ways. And we've had a problem with air quality because of forest fires. By the way, you mentioned financial impact on this. One of the great things people don't think about are the health costs associated with this. We have an epidemic of asthma.

We have kids with neighbors that they don't know anybody, doesn't have asthma and it's getting worse because of forest fire smoke and also because of the particulate matter that comes from burning fossil fuels. So the financial cost is not just losing jobs. It's not just losing industries. It's losing your health and the health costs have gone up dramatically because of that. So there's so many ways this makes sense. I've given you my best explanation as to why this is. And it's very unique to America. You know, you go to other continents, this is not a debate between the liberal and conservative parties. You know, every country has a liberal and conservative party. And there's unanimity that we ought to do something about this

and the rest of the world. It's a very strange thing in the United States and most bizarre, because we're the most technologically adept people in the world. You know, we're the ones that went to the moon. Yeah. And so why this has infected us is a little strange, but we need to do something about it, which is get out there and vote and march. Yes, sir. And you know, what's also not lost on me, there's the economic cost. There's obviously that the health costs. There's also a cost to our national security, which you were just referencing. You know, the United States is really a leader on science and technology. And as we see these threats to, you know, our research institutions, funding grants, all of these things, it's not lost on me that if we, you know,

knock the wheels off the bus of progress on environmental science, we're given it to other countries. Like, we will forfeit our future as technologists to countries like China. Yeah. And it's really important for us to continue to lead on this from a democracy. So this is where we shine. We do two things really well, at least till now in America. One is democracy, which we gave to the world, the modern world, and two, our scientific and innovative entrepreneurial genius. And both of those are in our assault right now.

We know about the assaults on democracy, but the assault on science, the assault on innovation, the assault on creativity based on technology. You know, you're in a creative business, right? Yeah. And congratulations on your career. Thank you. Science is a creative business as well.

And by choking that creativity, this is really the economic powerhouse of the United States. The economic growth of the United States starts in laboratories, probably most, if not, many, if not most, in University of Laboratories. That's where these ideas come from, where they start. That's where these startups come out of. And right now, that's choked off for reasons that really are difficult to understand. because those researchers now are not coming to do research and projects. They are going to Germany and England and China, and that's where that research is going to go

because these researchers, they have a passion for doing it. They're going to find a place to do it. And now we're telling them they can't do it. And it's so insidious. One little story. So when we marched last weekend, we had a unique way of doing it. We did it on our ferry boat. So on the ferry from Bainbridge Island to Seattle, we had 2,000 people walking around the ferryboat deck in protest.

And I met a woman named Ella, and she is a freshman at Harvard. She is the pole vault champion in the Ivy League, and she's also a medical device researcher at age like 18 or 19. And she's doing research on using mechanical energy instead of electrical energy to power. little devices that are put in your body as a simpler way to do it. And she has a research grant, which is incredible, the 18, 19-year-old person thinking about medical devices. Yeah, wow. And her grant just got canceled.

Can't do it. This summer, she was going to be trying to invent something that can help people my age get through the aging process. Yep. And they canceled her. And that is so heartbreaking to see the ambition in her eyes quash. Now, she's resilient. She's going to go on.

I told her, look, this may delay your work, but it's not going to stop it. So go Polvalt this summer. And we'll be back when Democrats get in charge at the House of Representatives, at least. So we're hoping that'll happen. By the way, there's litigation on all of this, too. Yes. We're hopeful we've got, you know, a dozen injunctions already against Trump's trying to stop this progress. so all is not lost here.

So we've still got hope. We'll be back in just a minute, but here's a word from our sponsors. Not that I'm any fan of the person I'm about to mention, but even Elon Musk is warning that America will not win the technology race without clean energy production. We've got to have it. There's no amount of oil drilling that will be able to fulfill our needs. There's no way to increase production to those levels.

And it doesn't make any sense, as we've said, because it's more expensive. Well, listen, maybe Elon got one right recently, and that's the one, that choking off technological innovation is crazy in the United States of America. And by the way, his story is instructive, too, because it also shows how governmental investment early in the arc of progress in these. technologies is extremely important. His company got a start, in part because of some federal assistance that helped that company get going. And that makes sense. Because while you're competing with these incumbent old technologies, getting a little start, a little seed money really, really helps. And it does so well. You know, I started a thing called the Clean Tech Center or a test bed facility at the University of Washington several years ago and met these two

young guys that had invented a way to increase the efficiency of a solar cell by kind of concentrating the light, changing the frequency, capturing some of the frequencies of light. That was like four years ago. Well, now they spun off their company. They've been acquired by somebody else. And it started with this little seed money from the University, from the state of Washington, to start this clean tech lab. Yeah. And I think it's really important to frame things this way for people to understand, you know, how large the sphere of effect for these industries really is, and that it affects, you know, science, tech, budget, health, everything. I think it can be a little hard to wrap your head around it

because it's such an enormous part of our world. And one of the things I think, and you can tell me if I'm correct here, one of the things I think I'm seeing is especially with the extreme weather and the way things are changing, you know, since Trump got back into office, I do feel like I'm seeing people realize, you know, this is, this is bad. The fact that Noah is changing that he wants to absolutely, you know, cut it down to basically be completely inefficient. That signals to Americans that the president is essentially saying, you're on your own. You know, disaster warnings have not gone out on days they needed to since he took office and people have died. Can you kind of

walk us through a bit what NOAA and the National Weather Service do and why they are so important to folks across the country? I can, and I wish I wasn't so experienced at this, but I was governor for 12 years for the most beautiful state in the country and the most beautiful country in the planet, most beautiful planet in the solar system. But it was injured so multibly by climate-related disasters. And I know so many people whose lives have been interrupted and sometimes lost because of these climate-related disasters. And it's very personal with me because I've seen what that trauma does when your house

has been burned down. I remember this couple when actually standing just literally the ashes of their house hugging each other, just trying to support each other. There's such trauma when you lose your house or your life. we had two whole towns burned down in forest fires and of course our forest fires have almost doubled in the last several decades because of heat because of heat and drought and dryness these forests are just tinders waiting to explode now across the western united states there's no force on nature that can really totally solve it we can manage our forests for doing that but you can't totally solve the problem when they're so dry so i've seen this personal and when i've seen what trump did which was so callously indifferent

it really does make my blood boil. There's town called Malden burned down several years ago in eastern Washington. The whole town burned down. In fact, the fire engine burned down in the fire station. The fire was moving so quickly. And we asked, you know, the federal government for help. And Trump says, no, I'm not going to help. And when the Republican congresswoman said, why want you help?

You know, this is a Republican district. And he said, because I don't, you know, I don't like the governor. you know he is he's not subservient to me won't kiss my ring often enough so he refused assistance to those families whose homes were in ashes whose lives were severely compromised and because the whole town when you have the whole town burned down you just don't have something to go back to there's no city hall there's no fire station there's no medical clinic and so that is so devastating to a community and to me how I look at this problem when I think about that couple standing in the ruins of their home, pleading with the president who was hired to help them,

turn his back on them, literally. He's turning his back on these people, their most desperate moment where he said that we're not going to help these people. I can't think of a more scandalous, abusive thing for a public official to do. Look, we're not asking him to go to the moon or cure cancer by next Monday. We're simply asking him to help these people who are in stress. and it's fires here, but it's floods, too. I remember talking to another family. They got flooded out in the northern part of the state of Washington.

And they took about a year to rebuild their home. They had a party celebrating, rebuilding their home, and a week later another flood came through and wiped out their home again. And to turn your back on these people is just such an outrage. And we need to do something about it, which clearly. is to vote and go help people that can get into office to stop this madness. Now, he talks about it as waste, fraud, and abuse. But I'll tell you what, when you see a family standing in those ashes,

and they ask you for a little bit of food to eat for a few weeks and a little bit of rental assistance so they can go to apartment for a few weeks while they figure out where you're going to be, and maybe some assistance with jobs because you've lost your jobs because the economy has been destroyed in your local community. that ain't waste, fraud, and abuse. That's human compassion. It's responsibility of what we hire the federal government to do.

So I'm hopeful we'll turn this around. I sure hope so too. I think it's really important to remind people that programs like this, that's your ROI for your investment in this country, for your being a citizen, for you're paying taxes and building an economy, you know, if you don't believe. believe in social safety nets, then go live somewhere else. Go live off the grid. Start your own country and be one of one. And we're all at risk here, too. Doesn't matter where you live. Everybody's at risk from climate-related disasters. They're so omnipresent and they're almost

every week. And it hits all of us, Democrats and Republicans alike. In fact, that little town I told you about Malden, Washington, when I went back, you know, they voted for Donald Trump. 70%. These are communities who are wildly supportive of him, and then he turns back on them. And unfortunately, this is something we got to wrap our heads around. This is going to get worse before it gets better. The frequency of fires, a frequency of floods, the frequency of extreme weather events, just rainstorms. We've had rainstorms that destroyed Mount Rainer National Parks several years ago. It doesn't drivel. We're not having these downpards. This is going to increase in the near term because we didn't start this effort 20 years ago like we should

have. So FEMA and the federal government is going to be even more important. And it's important that the federal government get involved because when you have a local community that's hurt, you need to get these assets from multiple states helping out. And I've seen this. People come from and bless the Red Cross who has help, but they can't carry the whole ball here to help people with this assistance. Well, and I think that's something people need to remember is that, you know, FEMA exists so that we can take care of each other.

And so to watch the president slash, you know, 30% of the staff and threaten to eliminate the agency altogether and derail our hurricane preparation and, you know, have the head of Noah that he appointed say he didn't even know there was a hurricane season. I spent 10 years in North Carolina. I know a lot about hurricane season. really painful for me, despite the fact that I don't live there anymore, to watch the president deny aid to the folks who were affected by Hurricane Helene in that state. It was hard to watch them deny aid to the tornado survivors in Arkansas. And as you said, a lot of those folks are his voters. And the whole point I believe in being a leader is to be a leader for everyone. And the bottom line is here, and you mentioned this earlier, you know, there's a lot of

people who make a lot of money on an old system. And while Trump is currently turbocharging the climate crisis to increase profits for all his oil and gas buddies, Americans, you know, red states and blue are paying the price. And so I think the first step is this, moment right it's the informed conversation it's making sure people have the facts and then as you said it's organizing and it's getting out and and voting and making sure um that all of us are able to say hey this isn't working this isn't working for anybody so we've got to do something differently i know that can be hard probably for some of the folks at home because you know we've got a year and half till the midterms. It's scary to think that we have to keep fighting before we might

see a shift. So to try to inject a little hope here, I'm curious, as you are an expert in the space, what you think are some of the most promising things coming down the pipeline in terms of clean energy technologies and the job creation that comes out of those innovative spaces. Well, first off, I know this sounds nuts. We're at the moment, we're at the trough of the wave. We've got our climate denying president. He's trying to crater all the federal assistance we're getting. But I am super optimistic our ability to solve this problem.

And the reason is, as I'm surrounded by people in my state who have emerging technologies that can solve this problem, if we simply allow them a little bit of room to run. Just give you a real quick rundown some of the things going on in my state. So in my state, there are two companies, CELIN Group 14. They've invented a new way to use a silicone anode battery that can increase the range of your car, 20 or 30%, and charge it much more quickly. They have manufacturing plants now under construction. These are real companies making real products that can have a quantum leap forward in the range of your electric car. Right around the corner, literally like a mile from those two companies, is it coming to?

called 12 that's making jet fuel out of carbon dioxide and water with no waste products so that when you fly in your jet there's no you don't have a carbon footprint if you will you're using carbon free fuel and they're building their manufacturing plant right up the river about oh 20 miles from them is a company who's going to build the first fusion energy plant in the United States a 50 megawatt production plant using fusion not fission. This is not fission that we know as the old nuclear power. This is a process of fusing atoms rather than splitting them. It goes back to that book I read when I was 10 that actually they may begin construction on in the next 12 months. You've got companies that are improving

the performance of solar energy. We have the first marine battery manufacturing plant in Bellingham, Washington. And we're going to be building electric ferries. So now we won't You won't be breathing in that smoke coming out of a smokestack of your ferries anymore. They're all electric, and I've ridden them on them in Norway. They work. I've seen the biggest one in the world is now in Uruguay. So the wind turbine industries continuing to be more productive. Wow.

Building solar like crazy. So everywhere I turn around, there's an entrepreneur and skilled working people building new services and products that contain this piece and reduces our costs of electricity. I mean, think about this. What a blessing to have infinite energy fallen on our shoulders that we can turn it into electricity to run whatever we want to run with no pollution. We don't have to dig a hole in the ground. It falls, it's delivered free from 9 million miles away from the sun and it falls right on

us. I mean, this is a real blessing. Yeah. And now to see the continued improvement of those things is thrilling to me. but we want to accelerate the pace of that development, not retarded. And we can do that if we just don't go backwards in some of these policies. I mean, that does feel really exciting. And now a word from our sponsors who make this show possible.

When you think about, for example, you know, you talk about these technologies, my brain starts to run wild thinking about what it would be like if suddenly all these airplanes flying around the planet every day had no carbon footprint. If every water vessel, you know, didn't need to use gas fuel, it makes me think about the early days when COVID first began and granted terrifying time. but when everything really shut down and we started to see how quickly the planet could rebound if a lot of our pollutants ceased to be pumped, you know, into our air every day, what do you think, or have you heard any of these scientists talk about what sort of healing we would see for the planet if entire industries did transform like this? Are they modeling any of that yet? Well, I think that, first off, the planet does feel quite quickly, and it astounds me how fast an ecosystem can't get restored.

We had one of the largest dam removal projects, the Elwha Dam, it was really of no use anymore to anyone. It was just obsolete, and the Elwhal River in the Olympic National Park, and it used to have this prodigious salmon run, and it was removed. It was really joyous occasion when that happened. And just within, you know, months salmon were coming back on the river. It's really astounding to see how salmon will recover. Little Piper's Creek, where I grew up in the north side of, in a suburban area of Seattle, which didn't have any salmon when I, you know, at least when I was a teenager. And we worked to restore the community.

It was really community-led effort, a little help in the state, I think, to restore the habitat. You know, you just make it. so it spreads out, doesn't run so fast. You put woody debris in it. Now you've got this prodigious salmon run coming back, and the kids go back. It's just a huge community celebration when you see that life really be restored. So we know that things do come back, but there are some difficult realities that we have to face that ought to not make us afraid of progress, but to inspire more rapid progress.

And there are some systemic problems that, we have that are going to be devilous for quite some time, principally water temperature. So our water temperature has increased so much in the state of Washington that salmon literally can't get up some of our rivers. They can't survive. So we had a really great dam and run go up to Columbia River, hundreds of miles up to Columbia River, but stopped when they got to the mouth of the Okan, in Okinaw County because the water is too hot.

They couldn't keep going to spawn. Actually, we got lucky. They finally got up there because we got a break in the weather. But this water temperature issue is one that is difficult. That's why we need to double our efforts to improve habitat, for instance, to allow Mother Nature to do everything that she can do. And we want to get back to work and give her a hand. We sure do.

And, you know, it is beautiful to watch it. I got to go and visit some of the scientists working at Vermeo in New Mexico a few years ago and just seeing the restoration of, you know, the cutthroat trout and the bison there, it's absolutely incredible to watch ecology heal. And it makes me think a lot about your legacy. You know, during your time as governor,

Washington, with your leadership, passed one of the strongest clean energy laws in the country. So you know this stuff is popular. possible. What lessons did you learn about what it actually takes to rally folks to get ambitious climate policy passed? Well, if I can share and thank you for the kudos of our state because our policies are the best in the nation. And that's why it's one of the reasons we had such economic success because we're driving all these new companies to come here and grow. And it's one of the reasons we have such a dynamic economy. I'll mention several things. One, perseverance.

Just say, look, you butt your head against a brick wall for years and years and years, and then you finally break through it. So when I became governor in 2013, we had a Republican Senate, and they refused to assist in any way to deal with anything in climate. That was very frustrating to me. You know, I wanted to have a bipartisan effort. So I started a bipartisan commission with Republican senators on it. But they basically just refused to participate. So then we finally got a Democratic majority in our legislature. But I still had a couple of kind of folks that hadn't got the memo even on the Democratic side. Right. So I had to work for several years to get those last two votes. And there were some changes in the legislature. And what I found is frequently,

it is much easier to change the people sitting in the seats than to change their minds. So we had some changes in who's sitting in the seats. And on year six or seven of my governor's term, we finally got the capstone of our multiple faceted effort, which is a cap and invest system, which generates $3 billion by any of them that we then turn around and get people with heat pumps and electric school buses and air filtration systems and everything else.

Now, we've done other things. We had 100% clean energy grid requirement. We have the best building efficiency standards in the United States. We don't waste energy. We have a low-carbon fuel standard, which basically gives people cleaner fuels in multiple ways. We have a climate core to teach kids the science of climate change. So we've done a lot. But the big most effective tool is this cap-and-invest system.

And that came in in 2019 in your fix. or seven, that we then now have impact. And here's the really cherry on the top. The fossil fuel, you know, billionaires didn't like that. So they came in and tried to repeal this law, and they put it on the ballot. And we had a knock down, drag out fight. And the wise citizens of the state of Washington defeated them 62 to 38. Nice.

I mean, that is the biggest landslide, Washington State history. Wow. Because Washingtonians understood the economic benefits, the job benefits, the health benefits. And it wasn't even necessary to talk about, you know, rising sea levels alike because they understood the first order of benefits that if you get a heat pump, if you get solar and wind and it's cheaper. Yeah. If your kids don't have to breathe forest fire smoke. Yeah. Our kids couldn't go outside for days at a time two summers ago because of forest fire smoke.

So people understood the first order of magnitude and soundly gave us a blue-riven feel of approval. I think that should give confidence to politicians going forward, looking at the experience in Washington State. We bring companies here instead of them going somewhere else because we have this entrepreneurial culture and we invest in them. And then people support it. So people said this is not a winner politically. They're just dead wrong. I've seen it firsthand. First off, I got elected governor running on this. Then we won 62.38 going away. This is a winning issue if it's properly framed and you talk about it in the right way. well it turns out if you tell people the truth that helps it helps so now that you know are out of office

for the last several months and and obviously i know you're spending a lot of time with your grandkids and you're still so incredibly involved when you look forward what feels like your area of most excited focus. What feels like your work in progress for what comes next? Well, I'm still engaged in this fight and in a variety of ways. I'm working with a group called climate power. Climate power has been a very effective group to help communicate the truth. As you said, just use the truth. It's so simple, as Mark Twain said. So easy. So I'm working with them on communication to let people know about the power of clean energy across the country in multiple forums.

I'm working on an effort to help people who have losses due to forest fires have some system to help them. So I'm quite active. I'm active in trying to raise my voice on ferry boats marching with people and letting them know how important that is to help people on the electoral cycle as well.

So I'm quite engaged in this effort. And I am excited. I know it's easy to kind of get down in the situation we're in, but I just believe we're going to succeed in this. I don't believe humans ultimately will be the cause of their own destruction. I don't believe that. I believe that we will rescue ourselves. It's been delayed by this electoral cycle, but we've been delayed before. I went through the Bush era.

I went through the second Bush presidency where he started a war in Iraq. And, you know, a lot of these wars are associated with access to oil. and he slowed down our effort. You know, he wanted to do coal-based stuff that just didn't pencil out at all. And his presidency slowed us down by years. But we came back during the Obama era. We passed things going forward.

We came this close to pass in a cap and invest bill. Then we got slowed down again by Trump, but then we got the Biden presidency. We're these, you know, a miracle of the Inflation Reduction Act and the tax cuts, which are now threatened again, got passed. And we've seen spectacular economic growth. Some of these companies that I told you about in Washington, they got a little benefit to get going because of those tax benefits. And right now, they're under threat. Again, you know, we talked about Senator Tillis, he could cause 45,000

job losses in his state over the next couple of decades if he votes to get rid of these tax cuts or to make them less accessible to people. Now, I've heard he's trying to make it, it's trying to sweeten the deal a little bit. You know, he's trying to make it that you don't destroy the tax cuts till a little later. Well, that's like saying, hey, give me a benefit because I've delayed your hanging by a couple weeks. That's not really an answer to this problem. We need Republicans to stand up and preserve this.

My point is, progress is not linear. Yes. You're going up, and then you're stable. You're going up, then you're stable. It's step by step. Martin Luther King was right. said, you know, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice, and it is long.

This battle is long. And this is a moment of we got some headwinds, but the winds are going to change. We're going to be back in business, and the genius that is in our country is going to be unleashed again, and we're going to get better, cheaper energy and healthier kids and less climate change. Now, I believe that's going to happen. I wish what happened yesterday. You and me both, Governor.

But I've learned that the power of perseverance is the most important thing in this battle. Indeed, I love that. The power of perseverance is a good one to focus on. Thank you so much for joining us today, you know, to give us a window into what you know and what we all can do. I hope to see you at a march either on the water or on the land very soon. Well, I will tell people, as we bid a do, whatever you do right now has value. You have agency. People have power and authority right now.

And anything you do, contacting your legislators, being out on the sidewalks, peaceably, talking to your cranky uncle about why this is a good idea, all of those things mount up. Everybody can put a brick in the wall here. So whatever you're doing out there, keep it up. We're going to win this battle, and I will be there with you. I can't wait. Thank you so much. Thank you.