Jay Inslee: ‘We Are Getting Ready to Teach Our Children to How Stay Inside Because of the Smoke from the Forest Fires’

EXCERPT:

INSLEE: "Well, I think the reality is we should not hide from it, we should face it. The reality is we have a permanent emergency in my state, most of western United States, and indeed, the whole nation. Because of climate change. This is an absolute reality that we are now experiencing. And when you ask, how are we feeling it, the thing that was most impressive to me in the last two weeks is we are feeling it in virtually everything in our lives. Today we're getting ready to teach our children how to stay inside because of the smoke from the forest fires. We lost billions of shellfish, our oyster industry lost a good part of it, its crop that are now rotting on our beaches. Our glaciers are melting. Our highways, our highways right now have buckled because of the heat. And today, one of our major east-west corridors is closed because of the forest fire over the North Cascades. So the point about climate change is, you know, you can run, but you cannot hide. It will find you in one aspect of your life.”