By Greg Jayne
Bill Dewey (click here) of Taylor Shellfish in Shelton, Wash., and his colleagues watch oyster hatchery water quality levels carefully to keep plumes of acidic water from eating very young oysters.
We can’t afford it. (click here)
Of the many climate-related issues mentioned by Gov. Jay Inslee, from detailing this year’s legislative action in Olympia to advocating a World War II-like economic mobilization to mentioning the health impacts of a warming world, that was the thing that stood out: We can’t afford to ignore it.
“People say, ‘How are you gonna pay for this?,’ ” Inslee said. “I go, ‘How are you gonna pay for Paradise, Calif., that burned down? How you gonna pay for the utility industry? The largest utility in California just went bankrupt. How you gonna pay for the floods? I’m going to Iowa next week, where there’s been a billion-and-a-half dollars damage. How do you pay for that?”
Inslee was speaking to The Columbian’s Editorial Board and, naturally, the conversation turned to the climate. Inslee, after all, is a climate-action evangelist who is bringing his gospel to the nation while seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. And the underlying message was that ignoring the crisis will be more costly than dealing with it.
Oh, critics might decry the Green New Deal proposed in Congress as too expensive. They might warn that moving the United States’ electrical grid away from fossil fuels will raise utility prices. They might say that the economy will crumble under the weight of decisive action.
All of which is kind of like Franklin D. Roosevelt saying in 1942, “it’s too expensive to fight the Nazis; we’ll just let them win.” As Eliza Barclay and Jag Bhalla wrote for Vox.com: “Is there any benefit now that can outweigh the risk of your descendants suffering or not surviving? The only long-lasting cultures are those that don’t eat their seed corn or choose to always put the present above what they know they’ll need to survive in the future.”
Inslee has long been sounding the alarm on climate change; he even co-authored a 2007 book about it — “Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy.” And, as we detailed in last week’s column about the newly passed state budget, he is a firm believer in government’s ability to use taxes to drive the economy and bring about social change....
