Discussion: Inslee: 'The World's On Fire' And 'We've Got A Climate Denier In The White House'

Jayā€™s got my vote

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Would love to see Inslee debate the issue with Pence in 2020.

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If he can show heā€™s electable heā€™ll have mine because he is dead right about the problem.

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While heā€™s very unlikely to get my vote in the primary, I do appreciate that he REALLY is bringing a needed voice to this issue. Some people are credited as doing so for other issues, but heā€™s actually walking the walk and talking the talk. I also appreciate how deftly heā€™s slapping around people who are just making up shit about the Green New Deal. I like how he handled Megan McCainā€™s hyperventilating.

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ROTFLMHO
Picturing this, I almost choked on my muffin

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Liking this guy more and more.

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He would absolutely get my vote as VP. I agree that we need to have views on climate change prominently featured in 2020.

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McConnell (who props up Trump) may well become the most pivotally destructive human in history. Every day we allow Trump to be in Office is a day we lost in this fight to save our Planet.

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I just hope Donnie and Klan are around long enough for the inevitable Environmental Crimes Tribunalsā€¦

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McConnell is not an asteroidā€¦a meteorā€¦heā€™s even more polite in his speech than Roy Mooreā€¦How can an unassuming person like McConnell be so dangerous to all of us?

Because most people are ignorant as to the levers of power and interconnections, they look for bogeymen, instead of those who are in destructive organizations and simply work in them.

The GOP is such an organization.

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ā€œThe worldā€™s on fireā€ is one of the truest statements. In every issue.

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As a former Washington resident, I say take Inslee seriously. Weā€™ll see how things go, but heā€™s definitely on the radar to be given a close look.

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Itā€™s unlikely heā€™d craft policy on any issue including climate as a Veep. The person heading the ticket would do that, and so far EVERYONE wants to head the ticket. Also, no one votes for a ticket because someoneā€™s on it as Veep.

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Global warming is an extinction-level event and all other sociopolitical issues and emergencies are effectively subsumed by it. An incremental response was possible when President Carter made energy policy a priority and perhaps only a bit more strenuous had Al Gore been POTUS after. But Reagan took the solar panels off the White House roof and the Bush family was oil bidness top to bottom and neither we nor the world have the luxury of time any more.

Any Democrat will have my vote in the general but Inslee has mine in the primary because, win or lose, this issue must be at the absolute top of the policy priority heap. This cannot be just another policy box among others to be checked off by a candidate.

The Earth has experienced five mass extinctions before the one we are living through now, ... Unless you are a teenager, you probably read in your high-school textbooks that these extinctions were the result of asteroids. In fact, all but the one that killed the dinosaurs were caused by climate change produced by greenhouse gas. The most notorious was 252 million years ago; it began when carbon warmed the planet by five degrees, accelerated when that warming triggered the release of methane in the Arctic, and ended with 97 percent of all life on Earth dead. We are currently adding carbon to the atmosphere at a considerably faster rate; by most estimates, at least ten times faster. The rate is accelerating.

ā€” David Wallace-Wells
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Sunny Jay is my governor and heā€™s a long shot but am glad he is calling out climate change. We have seen this up close in WA state. but heā€™s been marginally successful here policy wise wrt climate change.On other fronts, we are one of the most trade dependent states in the country which makes him uniquely qualified on trade and trade agreements. WA state is a major exporter,from airplanes to apples to software. While Jayā€™s been governor there have been major fires (largest in state history), a bridge collapse on I-5, and a land slide that buried a neighborhood near Oso -many lives lost. He made sure things were up and running as fast as possible. Both the bridge collapse and land slide were not small things. The fires consumed large amounts of forest and private lands as well as small towns.

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I was still there for the horrible Oso landslide. Followed the shocking train running off the overpass onto I-5 from afar. I know heā€™s a long shot. But, Obama looked like someone out of nowhere. The field is crowded, but you just never know who people will support.

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To both of you. ā€“ he does not have the traditional political charisma, so what gets him elected?

@leftcoaster

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Inslee: ā€˜The Worldā€™s On Fireā€™ And 'Weā€™ve Got A Climate Denier In The White Houseā€™

He uses a nice metaphor. I say ā€œniceā€ because reality is worse than that. Itā€™s not on fire. Itā€™s already burned.

The Tundra is thawing, releasing enormous quantities of methane (a very bad greenhouse gas), which eventually decays to CO2. Once we have significant melt-off of the Greenland glaciers, which shall happen, desalination of the seawater will reduce the density of that water, and it will stop sinking. Water sinking near the poles drives the ocean currents. Once the currents off Scandinavia, the British Isles and Europe slow, the moderation of winter temperatures will be dramatically reduced, and Europe will experience Siberian winters. Polar vortexes will become increasingly frequent. There will be periods of heavy precipitation followed by periods of drought, and this is not conducive to raising crops. Much of the currently arable soil west of the Mississippi river will become less productive.

When you freeze saltwater, you actually extract salt from the ice, and this makes the surrounding water more saline and more dense. As the ice melts, more sunlight penetrates the water surface, implying less ice formation. Itā€™s a positive feedback mechanism. You need the climate to support more ice formation than we currently have. We canā€™t reverse that without technology not yet invented, and that technology would need to operate on a massive terra-forming scale.

We arenā€™t going to regrow lost glaciers overnight. What happens when the Himalayan glaciers are gone? The great rivers of Asia will become seasonally flowing. What will the thirsty people of China and the Indian subcontinent drink? We are likely looking at future wars over water.

We must recapture as much carbon as possible and resequester it, and we needed to start decades ago.

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