Welcome back to Seattle, Vice President Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris returns to Seattle on Tuesday to spotlight the Biden administration’s motion on local weather change … and to boost marketing campaign cash, after all. Let’s give attention to the previous, not the latter.

Seattle is likely one of the most distant main cities within the continental United States from the nation’s capital. In equity, the entire West Coast’s main cities are practically equidistant from Washington, D.C. Such are the vagaries of historic geography.

However Seattle is also a comparatively popular stop for presidents and vice presidents, particularly Democrats who discover a welcoming crowd on this progressive bastion. Donald Trump, a Republican, by no means visited as president. Harris was here just last fall, although it’s been a number of years since President Joe Biden has put in an look. Maybe along with his reelection marketing campaign underway, he’ll make time for a go to to rally help.

Harris is taking something of a victory lap on climate change measures. It was virtually precisely a 12 months in the past that she forged the tiebreaking vote within the Senate to go the Inflation Discount Act, which allocates about $375 billion over a decade to advertise clean-energy manufacturing and combat local weather change.

The act consists of cash to increase tax credit for renewable vitality, fund deployment of electrical transmission strains and supply rebates for individuals who buy electrical vehicles. These and different measures will scale back our state’s and the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases.

Washington is aware of properly the necessity to fight local weather change, and has been making strides towards funding in renewable vitality and conservation. If record-setting warmth waves aren’t convincing sufficient, throw within the devastating wildfires which have struck the state in recent times. For 4 years earlier than Biden took workplace, federal motion to scale back greenhouse gasoline emissions and put together for a hotter world was distinctly missing.

Earth faces a climate emergency, even when Biden is unwilling to formally declare one. Harris, who hails from California, understands the deleterious results {that a} warming world is having on Western states.

It’s all the time robust to go off official White Home messaging, however when she speaks in Seattle, we hope she acknowledges simply how dangerous issues are whilst she trumpets the administration’s efforts to combat local weather change.