Jay Inslee's CNN town hall showed he wants to lead on climate. Voters have other priorities too.

[babylonsister]

Jay Inslee’s CNN town hall showed he wants to lead on climate. Voters have other priorities too.
The Washington governor focused on global warming, but also fielded questions on health care, gun control, and Boeing.
By German [e-mail]@vox.com Apr 11, 2019, 12:10am EDT


Jay Inslee is running for president, he says, to do something about climate change, and his campaign has focused on the issue. His CNN town hall in Washington, DC, on Wednesday night showed that voters seem to like the focus — but also have other priorities they’d like addressed.

Inslee, the second-term governor of Washington, began the town hall by saying that global warming would be his top priority as president. “I will make this pledge right now: If I am elected to this high honor, I will make defeating climate change the number one priority of the United States,” Inslee said. “And I believe I can accomplish that.”

In a key moment, Inslee laid out his campaign’s intention: “There was only four minutes of climate change in the last three presidential debates. I’m going to end that.”

more...

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/11/18305195/jay-inslee-cnn-town-hall-climate-change

[The Blue Flower]

1. Economic, security, and so many other issues depend on addressing climate change

Meeting the challenge will stimulate so much more, very much as the space program did. Add to that is that it's a threat to our existence on this planet, and nothing else will matter if we fail.

[Andy823]

2. If we don't fix climate change

the future won't be looking very good!

[lapfog_1]

3. i know this might be unpopular

given that there are so many other important issues...

but I feel like climate change is the one true danger to the extinction of our species...

when you look at what happens when the environment or resources change dramatically for a limited isolated population (Easter Island for example)...

and that we are changing the chemistry of the entire planets atmosphere...

the food we grow to sustain 7B of us (admittedly not all that well distributed), the fact that the majority of the earth's population lives in places that will be profoundly changed in the next 20 to 40 years.

Sometimes I think that everything else (voting rights, gun control, health care, automation, immigration, tax policy, military spending, foreign policy, etc, etc) is simply not important... but I'm old now so I may be focused on the issue of sustainability and the human race more than I care what personally happens to me or even those alive today as adults... I worry about the children who will be my age when climate change affect the entire planet and what that might mean (war and famine and death on an unimaginable scale).

That said, I am a minority... and I don't believe enough people are concerned enough to vote for a single issue candidate even if that issue is the one prime importance issue that crowds all of the others off the headlines eventually.

[LAS14]

5. I agree. nt

[redstateblues]

4. Could be EPA chief

[Shanti Mama]

6. I just wish hadn't used the word "defeat."

Maybe reverse, halt, stop. Defeat is so war-like.

[Hortensis]

7. Give us another 4 years of neglect and see what

priorities are then. Learning unnecessarily by experience, both stupid lessons and tragic ones, is absolutely the worst way to learn, not the best.

[JI7]

8. this is one of those things where it may not get votes but the right candidate will know

to deal with it when they agree in power.

it might require discussing it in a different way to large audiences.

connect it to everyday issues and problems.