E-mail a friendRep. Jay Inslee
original airdate December 4, 2007
Since '92, Jay Inslee has represented Washington State in the U.S. House. A member of the New Democrat Coalition, he began working on energy issues in '72 and serves on the Resources and the Energy and Commerce Committees. He was the prime sponsor of the New Apollo Energy Act and is co-author of Apollo's Fire, about U.S. challenges and opportunities as it navigates global warming and oil issues. Inslee holds a B.A. in economics and previously served in the Washington State legislature and practiced law.
Rep. Jay Inslee
Tavis: Congressman Jay Inslee is serving his sixth term in Congress and is an influential member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Washington Democrat is the coauthor of a new book about energy and energy policy here in the U.S. It's called "Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy." Congressman, nice to have you on the program.
Rep. Jay Inslee: Hey, great to be here, thanks for having me.
Tavis: Glad to have you. Let me start by asking about the title. That recalls something for me, that "Apollo's Fire."
Inslee: Yeah, the good days. In 1961, John F. Kennedy says, "We're going to go to the Moon in 10 years." That was an audacious thing to say. Our rockets were blowing up; the Russians were (unintelligible). We hadn't even invented Tang yet. (Laughter) But he said we were going to the Moon, and we went there, and we grew our economy at the same time.
Now we need to do for clean energy what we did for space in the 1960s, which is to engage the intellectual talent of America, the most can-do, optimistic, visionary people in the world history, to start building new, clean energy technology, and we can do that. We've got the same skill level, we've got the same intellectual vibrancy that we had during the sixties when Kennedy challenged us, and we're going to respond the same way.
So in a few years, you're going to start seeing these technologies blossoming all over the country and very importantly, boosting our economy. These are jobs in inner cities that have been losing jobs, and jobs in rural communities have been drying up. When we start weatherizing our homes, putting in new heating and lighting systems, putting in wind turbines in the farming community, building solar thermal plants in Arizona and Florida, you're going to see our economy rock and roll.
So this is a jobs program that's going to build our economy at the same time it defeats global warming. That's a pretty good deal for America.
Tavis: Let me back down for just a second and ask you frankly whether or not you think that Americans, risking gas prices notwithstanding, books like yours notwithstanding, all the talk about global warming notwithstanding, Al Gore, Nobel Peace Prize, Academy Award notwithstanding, do you think, all that said, plus some, that the American people as yet get the seriousness of the problem that we face?
Inslee: Yeah, that's a big yes, a big time yes.
Tavis: You think they get it?
Inslee: Yes, I do, big time.
Tavis: You really believe that?
Inslee: All across the country, yes, in every district, every community I talk to, every group I talk to, Chamber of Commerce, Kiwanis, Boy Scouts, you name it, people get a couple things about America. Number one, they understand the power of science. They understand that America, when we put our minds to it, we can engage technology to build our economy.
We're the people - I come from - we put in Boeing Airlines, we put in Microsoft software. Now we know we're ready for this next technological boost to really grow jobs in this country. So they get that, they're a can-do people. We're people who we see a problem; we go build something to fix it. So this is very much in the American character, number one.
And number two, we have reached critical mass on the public's understanding of the global warming problem. In any community of the country now, people get it, and secondly, they understand the danger of being addicted to Middle Eastern oil. I don't care whether you're a red and blue state, you know it's dangerous to be addicted to Middle Eastern oil, and everybody's paying $3.00 a gallon for gasoline now.
So those are three strikes, and the old fossil fuel industry is going to be out and we're going to bring in these new industries to grow jobs in this country.
Tavis: Bill Clinton's forward to this book notwithstanding, let me challenge you on a couple fronts.
Inslee: Bring it on. (Laughs)
Tavis: Only because I want to hear your take on this. Just as a counter-argument, or as an argument to what you said, my point would be that the American people as yet don't get it, one, because there is still this debate being pushed aggressively by folk on the right that the global warming thing is a myth. A whole lot of folk who are on radio and TV every day saying, "Jay Inslee is crazy; Al Gore don't know what he's talking about."
So there is still a debate about that, even amongst not just talk radio heads but amongst scientists. There's still a debate about that, that's my first argument to counter what you have to say. And the second would be if we really did get it, wouldn't that result in a change in our behavior to reduce, to reuse, to recycle, to do the kinds of things on global warming that would slow down the problem? So respond to those two points.
Inslee: Well first off, things are changing. That's why the Toyota Prius is the number one selling car in my state right now. That's why you're seeing more people going to green energy, and that's why you're seeing a drumbeat of political activity. Now people are starting to try to be green, even the U.S. Congress.
So there is a massive change going on. We're in a big transition right now. This is one of those magic moments; they call it a tipping point. We're tipping that over, both politically and economically, and it's happening because of this convergence of a couple things. Number one, the science of global warming is abundantly clear right now, but the science of technology right at the moment we need these technologies, they're coming on.
I was at the electric car convention at Anaheim yesterday where we're seeing these plug-in hybrid cars. You plug them in at night, you drive them just on electricity, 40 miles with zero gasoline, then you use hybrid after that. You get 120 miles a gallon. That's technology that's going to be mass-produced in four or five years.
Now when you see those combination of those things, that change is taking place. But the other thing is that this is a unified message. This book, "Apollo's Fire," every group that I've talked to, from red or blue states, Republicans or Democrats, understand there is a reason to do this, whether you believe in global warming or not.
We still need to do this to break our addition to Middle Eastern oil. There is a security reason to do that. Secondly, there is an economic reason to do this. This is an economic opportunity as much as it is an environment challenge, and that's why we wrote the book, because we want people to have a double shot of optimism.
We want them to have a sense of hope of how we're going to start exporting clean energy technology to China, start exporting clean, efficient cars to the rest of the world, and start having these homegrown jobs. When Carlton Brown builds an energy efficient development in Harlem like he's doing, he saves 50 percent of energy - 50 percent.
He uses 50 percent less energy to heat and cool those buildings, and he's building jobs right there in Harlem. You can't export those jobs to China or India; those are homegrown, green collar jobs. When Majora Carter does the same thing in the South Bronx, these green collar jobs are staying right here. When Carter Jones does it in Oakland, those are green collar jobs that are right here in America.
So this is an economic development message that all of us can embrace, and that's why some of the best things in politics are things that everybody can embrace. And I think this is one of them. We don't have to have this debate. We simply need to get off the dime and get the job done, and I hope Congress can do that this week.
Tavis: I want to talk about that in just a second, about what's happening in Congress this week, even as we speak. Let me go back to the last point you made, though. You named three persons, who I happen to know. All three of them are in communities of color. You mentioned Harlem, you mentioned Oakland, you mentioned Majora in the Bronx.
Inslee: I'll get to Benson, Minnesota in a minute.
Tavis: Okay. (Laughter)
Inslee: That's on the list, too.
Tavis: Touché. I only raise that because it just occurs to me that given the examples that you happened to use in that trilogy, those three, all communities of color. And I wanted to ask what you're seeing, what you're hearing, what you believe about what's happening inside of communities of color, because the flip side to the message you're giving me now, which is essentially that people of color in communities of color are getting it, the flip side of that is that environmental racism, as you well know, most impacts people in communities of color.
Where we dump this nasty stuff, more Black people, more Brown people live within a four- or five-mile radius of an environmentally toxic site. All across America, that is the stat. And yet I hear you suggesting to me with those examples that you offer that in communities of color around the country, even people of color are starting to get it.
Inslee: You bet, and Bracken Hendricks, my coauthor, did a great job on this. He's worked a lot on environmental justice issues in his career; he's helped to found the Apollo Alliance. What he's finding is that people are understanding that there's two kinds of green here. Not only have these communities been disadvantaged by being sited near toxic waste dumps and sited in these manufacturing plants.
So they've had sort of a bad green experience in that regard. But now we're going to have another good green experience, which is economic development, and you're seeing revitalization of these communities using the threat of global warming to develop an economic base in these communities. And it's not just the inner city, it is rural America.
This is a big deal in the dying farming belt, in the Midwest. These towns have been drying up. I mentioned Benson, Minnesota, where the Chippewa Valley community put in an ethanol plant using their own capital. Now they're feeding it back to their community. Laverne, Minnesota, same thing - they're doing wind and solar.
So this is a thing in these pockets. We've had some economic growth in this country, but we've had pockets that have been left behind, and this is a strategy of economic development that's going to help those pockets shine. There's another thing about this that's really cool I like: this is the democratization of energy.
When you have centralized energy, one big manufacturing plant doing all your energy, it sort of concentrates power, economic and political. This is distributed energy. When you can generate your own electricity on your rooftop or your community in Benson, Minnesota can generate their own electricity, or you can do your own development in Harlem, you're democratizing power both economically and politically, and it's a healthy thing from this country, and that's why it's getting embraced around the country.
Tavis: Let me close by going back to Congress and the work that they can get done this week, if they have the will to do so.
Inslee: Right, I hope so.
Tavis: Democrats are in charge of things, so tell me what's happening this week.
Inslee: Well, we hope to have a bill that's going to do the first step of what we call the new Apollo energy project, the first four steps: dramatically increase the efficiency of our cars to get better mileage, dramatically improve the efficiency of our lighting systems, have a promise to Americans we're going to have 15 percent of our electricity from clean, renewable sources, and dramatic increases in our building codes so we can have buildings that don't waste as much energy.
Now this is still - even though the Democrats are in the majority, we've still got to get 60 votes in the U.S. Senate, and unfortunately some of my friends across the aisle have been threatening to filibuster, and the president's threatening to veto portions of this. So we need some of those folks to get out there and talk to people, because Americans of all stripes recognize the economic potential of this and if we'll get some of my friends across the aisle, we'll get this done this week, it'll be a first step.
Not the only step, we've got a lot more we have to do. We need a system to cap the amount of carbon dioxide that's going into the air; else our goose is cooked from global warming. So we've got more work to do. We've got to repeal some of these tax cuts - $16 billion that have been handed out to the fossil fuel, oil, and gas companies while they charge you $3.00 a gallon - and reel that back in and put it in help for these new businesses.
Solar thermal, enhanced geothermal, biofuels that are clean - that's a technological program for America, going to grow jobs here. So we got more work to do.
Tavis: With a forward by former President Bill Clinton, the new book is called "Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy," coauthored by Washington state congressman and Democrat Jay Inslee. Congressman, nice to have you on the program.
Inslee: Tavis, thanks a million.
Tavis: Good to see you.
Inslee: Thanks for having me on.
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