I Don’t Have the Luxury to Wait on Climate Change
The media is mocking Jay Inslee for making climate change a priority. Here’s why they are wrong.
Last week, Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced his candidacy for president. He opened his campaign by defining climate change as the “one central, defining, existential-with-a-capital-E threat to the future of the nation” and stating that he believes change is only possible if the next president declares it to be “a clear priority — the number one, foremost, paramount goal of the next administration.”
National media decided that that’s a risky decision.
- Huffpost wrote about how The View’s Meghan McCain tried to “Burn Washington Governor Jay Inslee on Green New Deal.”
- CNN warned: “Jay Inslee wants to win the White House on climate change. He has his work cut out for him.”
- A headline at CNBC scoffed “Inslee faces risk in 2020 race as polling shows climate not top issue.”
- The Washington Examiner’s headline read almost like it was torn from The Onion: “Inslee faces daunting 2020 challenge to get Americans excited about climate.”
Most of these articles cited three polls to argue that Democratic primary voters aren’t fired up by climate change.
The first is a Gallup poll from last year that ranks various public policy issues by percentage of voters who rated the issue “Extremely/Very Important” in determining who they would vote for in the midterms. The poll tested 12 top issues and from healthcare to the Russian investigation. It found that 53% of all voters rated climate change Extremely or Very Important (rank 11), and 75% of Democratic voters (rank 5) felt the issue was of paramount importance.
The second is a Pew Research Center survey where voters rank the top priority for President Trump and Congress in 2019. Like Gallup, 67% of Democrats point to Climate Change as a top priority, but still rank 5 other issues ahead of it.
The final piece was a poll from ABC/Washington post that asks Democrats to lay out which issue they use to determine their vote. 17% say “climate change,” compared to 25% for “healthcare,” and another 25% for “reducing divisions between people and groups.”
The media’s fixation with polling this far ahead of an election is troubling. Sure, as the campaign manager for Initiative 1639, I recently used polling data to inform political strategy for a statewide ballot initiative. But each poll is one static snapshot in time, and they rarely predict voting behavior on Election Day.
And there isn’t a huge difference between an issue ranked number one (that was healthcare, by the way) by 84 percent of Democratic voters, and number five (climate change) with 75 percent rating it the same way. With a margin of error of plus or minus four percent, the difference is essentially meaningless.
Given the fact the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change just published a report warning that we have only 12 years to make a serious reduction in carbon emissions, this issue is the greatest threat facing the country. Either the next president makes addressing climate change the paramount objective of his or her administration, or it might be too late.
What shocked me most is that only 53 percent of voters surveyed in the Gallup poll said they feel climate change will affect them in their lifetime.
Maybe that’s why Democratic voters don’t feel the urgency around climate change that they do around healthcare. Maybe they’re old enough that they believe they won’t live to feel the effects of global warming but health care is something that they need right now — a tangible and immediate concern that all the data on global warming can’t replicate.
Unfortunately, for myself and others in my age group, we don’t have that luxury. Climate change is as real and as threatening for us as individual health crises are for the boomer generation.
I am reminded of Senator Feinstein’s much-reported confrontation with young climate activists whom she challenged by scoffing, “well, you know better than I do, so I think one day you should run for the Senate.” To this, a young woman who I can only hope is a future US Senator, responded, “but by that time, there’s going to be a big problem.”
I don’t need to be told that a presidential candidate’s policy focus is an uphill battle. I want to know how a candidate identifies the problems facing this country, and how he or she proposes to fix it. I don’t care who’s an underdog. I want to know which candidate has the best vision for the country. The only way we get there as a nation is if our political coverage is policy-centric, not horse-race journalism.
However, my main frustration is founded on principle. We claim to want leaders that are bold and courageous. According to national media, Inslee is making climate change the centerpiece of his campaign despite polling data suggesting the best strategy would be to focus on a different, more general issue like healthcare. At the very least, what that tells me is that Inslee is not making decisions based on where he feels the wind is blowing. He’s making decisions based on what he believes is the most important issue facing the country.
Isn’t that exactly what we want?
