Gov. Jay Inslee Advocates for a Clean Energy Economy

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Clearly, the United States, like the rest of the world, is in a deep economic hole right now because of coronavirus, the halting of the global economy and, as always, the poorest and the most vulnerable are going to be the biggest losers. At the moment, while all these, you know, disaster relief bills, for want of a better word, go through Congress we also see the White House and the president trying to bail out fossil fuel companies and all the rest of it. And also, conduct a major undercover of coronavirus assault on EPA regulations and clean air and water and mercury and all those things are happening right now. How is that going to be reversed? And do you think you can get what the U.N. secretary-general’s calling for, proper resources, you know, into the recovery bills for the climate?

GOV. JAY INSLEE (D-WA): Well, we should be as ambitious and insistent with the United States Congress as possible. And the reason is, is that this is a twofer. Any investment in clean energy technology to give Americans a shot including those who are most economically challenged at a good job building good technology to help provide better health, any dollar that we invest in this is both a dollar to help Americans’ health and a dollar to give a boost to the economy. And I will tell you, I think that the right metaphor to think about on what we have to do to restore, really, the international economy and, at least, the American economy is the thought of what we did to get out of the depression. And I think that we have to think grandly in that scheme. And frankly, the only thing that got America out of the depression are the investments associated with defeating fascism. And that investment got us out of the great depression. And so that level, that scale of ambition, I believe, is necessary and we have — clean energy is not the only thing in America. We need a new transportation infrastructure. We need the utilities. Our sewers and pipes are eroding like crazy. So, clean energy is one of the things we do but is a thing that will have the most long-lasting impact and it has the greatest job creating opportunity.

AMANPOUR: Right.

INSLEE: A dollar in clean energy creates more jobs than any other sector of our economy. So, we need to look at this through a lens of long-term health and short-term economic gain. This is a no-brainer. I hope Congress will do it now. But if the president is an unmovable object, he will have to be removed from office an get on with the people’s business in January.