Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), who announced a 2020 presidential bid last week, said Sunday that there will be an “enormous cost” if the U.S. does not act to combat climate change.
“If you net this out, what’s going to require sacrifices is the course of inaction. You’ve got to understand there’s enormous cost of doing nothing here,” Inslee said on ABC’s “This Week.”
{mosads}Inslee warned that communities could be flooded and there could be additional damaging fires like the ones last year in California if nothing is done about the climate.
“There’s a huge cost to our economy, to our health, to our national security if we do not act,” he said. “But there’s an enormous economic advantage if we embrace clean energy.”
Inslee, 68, announced his candidacy for president in a video released last Friday morning in which he championed the need to fight climate change.
“We’re the first generation to feel the sting of climate change. And we’re the last that can do something about it. We went to the moon and created technologies that have changed the world. Our country’s next mission must be to rise up to the most urgent challenge of our time: defeating climate change,” Inslee said in the video.
“I’m running for president because I am the only candidate who will make defeating climate change our nation’s No. 1 priority.”
The governor joins an increasingly crowded field of presidential hopefuls, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).