Governor Inslee is in Scotland for the COP26 climate conference and is holding a press conference after announcing new climate executive orders.

Here are three questions he should answer about those orders and Washington’s climate policy.
 

1. With your recent pledge to increase the availability of climate-friendly building materials, will you support increased timber harvests in Washington state forests? In partnership with the Pacific Coast Collaborative, the governor announced the creation of the Low Carbon Construction Task Force. As BC Premier John Horgan noted in the announcement, timber is a low-carbon alternative to construction materials like steel and concrete. Washington is a leader in sustainable timber management and cannot live up to the pledge while importing timber from other parts of the world.
    
2. Since your administration has consistently missed its climate targets, what are you doing differently with these pledges? Governor Inslee and the legislature set many previous targets for CO2 reduction. These include targets for government agencies and specific sectors at Results Washington, and statewide emissions targets. The state has consistently failed to meet those targets and in the case of Results Washington, they were scrubbed from the state’s web page. How are these pledges different than the ones his administration has consistently missed?
    
3. What analysis have you done of these new proposals to make sure they are wise investments? The governor has announced several initiatives on top of two wide-ranging and expensive pieces of climate legislation earlier this year. Using current prices of the same programs in California and Oregon, they could add about 20 cents per gallon in Washington state when fully implemented. Has the governor done any cost analysis of these new proposals?