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Governor Jay Inslee is running his 2020 campaign off the topic of climate change, so when he announced an emergency drought situation for the state of Washington, critics were a little bit skeptical. They had reason to be, as Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric science at UW, said the situation is

To comment on this, President of the Benji Backer joined the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH to discuss why he finds Inslee’s announcement to be more political than sincere.

“You’ve got every presidential candidate talking about climate change and he’s trying to put himself above the fold by making these unsubstantiated claims that are just completely false,” Backer said. “They’re fear mongering the constituents of Washington and the greater nation, because he’s just trying to get ahead.”

Rantz: Inslee oversold Washington drought to help failing campaign

As Jason notes, Inslee’s proclamations fall into a pattern in which environmentalists portray a situation as more dire than it is, and tend to alienate many of those who might otherwise be with them.

“People in the United States are sick of the alarmism around climate change. They’re sick of the fear-mongering, they’ve heard all these alarming scenarios throughout their lifetimes that haven’t come true,” Backer said. “It’s somebody who believes in climate change and that it’s human caused like I do, this really, really hurts our debate.”

Inslee recently expanded a drought emergency to nearly half the state because of claims of a worsened, poor water supply conditions and warmer and drier weather predicted throughout the summer.

Backer finds it insincere that Inslee is making climate change his number one issue when “he hasn’t done a single thing to help lower emissions here in the state or really even fix some of the other environmental problems in the state.”

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“If you want somebody leading on climate change on a national level — which I think is very important in practice — Jay Inslee is the worst person that I could think of in terms of national politics that could carry that voice.”