Inslee’s goals headed toward apocalyptic collision course

Published 1:30 am Friday, February 17, 2023

Gov. Jay Inslee has championed the three major causes most dear to Progressive Democrats in Washington state: housing, climate and environment. Resembling another of his COVID-related executive orders, however, Inslee’s long-term solutions for housing threaten to lay waste to our commitment to environmental stewardship and our goals for addressing climate change.

Environment

On Earth Day 2022, President Biden announced his goal of protecting 30% of the U.S. for nature. In December of 2022, countries gathered in Montreal for the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, recognizing the rapid collapse of nature and the dire consequences for humanity. They pledged to set aside and restore at least 30% of the planet for nature. When an orca mother carried her dead calf up and down the Salish Sea in a show of grief and defiance in 2019, Inslee responded by forming the Orca Task Force to recommend solutions to the decline of the Southern Resident Orca.

Climate change

During the 2020 presidential campaign candidate Inslee made Climate Change his No. 1 priority for the country. Under his leadership as governor, the state legislature enacted bills aimed at huge reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Housing

Inslee has more recently turned his attention to housing. During an 11/2/22 news conference, he summed up his approach to addressing the housing shortage: “We have hundreds of thousands of people moving to the state of Washington because we have such a great economy, because we’ve got the nicest place to live in the United States, but we’re 76,000 units short of building housing.”

He then described how new arrivals bid up the cost of housing and push people at the bottom onto the street. Overall Inslee evoked what he sees as a moral obligation to accommodate unlimited growth, including repealing “unnecessary” zoning rules.

This message is mirrored in the legislature where we’re told Washington needs to build 1 million new housing units by 2044 at a pace of 45,900 units per year for 22 years.

Environmental blinders

These housing targets, accompanied by the waiving of regulations, pose huge environmental impacts as forests are converted to subdivisions and ever more untreated and undertreated stormwater and sewage is spewed into Puget Sound. Just the sheer number of people Inslee is proposing we accommodate poses an ongoing threat to biodiversity and the health of our natural systems.

Conflicting goals

Washington state’s carbon footprint is about 78 million metric tons per year. In order to stay below 1.5 °C of global warming, these need to be cut by roughly 50% by 2030 (to 37 million tons). Already a doubtful goal due to climate legislation that’s full of loopholes for polluters, Inslee’s proposal for perpetual housing growth is a climate killer. That’s because no matter how green, how small or where it’s located, all new housing has a significant carbon footprint.

We can argue over numbers, but there’s no such thing as a zero-emissions home. First, there’s the impact on the land, much of which is often wiped clean of carbon-sequestering trees and vegetation. Then there’s the embodied carbon it takes to produce all the materials for a house and assemble them; the U.S. average is 65 tons. Then there’s operational carbon associated with the average U.S. household of 50 tons a year. Other impacts of increased housing include new and expanded schools, hospitals, transportation facilities, etc., easily doubling the total. Apply those numbers to 45,900 housing units per year, and we’re talking about an additional 10.5 million metric tons of carbon per year added to the state’s carbon footprint by Inslee’s solution to housing affordability.

Alternatives

There are alternatives to the housing industry’s self-serving supply and demand narrative and our supposed moral obligation to accommodate infinite population growth. There are alternatives that make sense, are sustainable, and don’t blow up environmental protections along with our climate goals.

Those include the purchase of deed restrictions to create perpetual affordability and measures to restrict the ability of investors to purchase housing. That’s just the beginning. There’s a whole creative suite of environment-and climate-friendly tools that could be applied to the issue of housing affordability that are being ignored by our governor.

It’s time to tell Inslee we refuse to be led down the path of no return where his coziness with developers and his lack of imagination threatens to destroy our progressive aspirations.

Ron Peltier served on the Bainbridge Island City Council from 2016-19, during which time he represented Kitsap County on the Puget Sound Regional Council.