Inslee: 'We have a commander in chief who's AWOL right now'

Washington's Gov. Jay Inslee is challenging President Donald Trump, but not for the White House. At least, not yet. 

Inslee, who has given speeches this year in Florida, Iowa and Maine, and has said he has not ruled out running for president, took on Trump this week over a suggestion that West Coast military bases be used to export coal or natural gas to Asia. 

"I swear this administration has a department of cockeyed ideas, and this is just another one of them," Inslee said in an interview with KUOW.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told the Associated Press this week that the Trump administration was considering using military bases or other federal facilities in Alaska, California, Oregon and Washington to boost coal or natural gas exports despite local opposition.

“I respect the state of Washington and Oregon and California,” Zinke said. “But also, it’s in our interest for national security and our allies to make sure that they have access to affordable energy commodities.”

Zinke's statement comes the week after the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its latest scientific report on the dire consequences of continued fossil fuel use. To prevent climate catastrophe from striking in as little as 20 years, it called for an "unprecedented" worldwide push to stop using coal and other fossil fuels.

"The response of the president is to totally ignore that and then just try to ship coal around the world for no reason," Inslee said. "It's just stunningly ignorant to not listen to the scientific community."

Inslee's state is home to at least two military bases — Naval Station Everett and Naval Station Kitsap — that have both rail service and deep-water ports, two necessities for a coal-export terminal.

Inslee said having to export coal would distract the Navy from its military mission and that the big security threat America faces is runaway climate change.

Listen to John Ryan's interview with Gov. Jay Inslee here:

U.S. military and intelligence agencies have said for years that climate change threatens national and global security.

"We have a commander in chief who's AWOL right now, and that's a pretty stern charge, but I'm making it because he's got an obligation to protect us," Inslee said. "And he's not doing it from this security threat."

Zinke's trial-balloon proposal lacked details, and the Interior Department declined KUOW's requests for an interview or more information. Interior spokesperson Faith Vander Voort, who has said that a devout Muslim could never serve as President, emailed the following statement:

The one military facility Zinke specifically mentioned is the largely abandoned Adak Naval Air Facility near the far end of Alaska’s Aleutian Island chain. So far west that it’s almost in the Eastern Hemisphere, Adak is practically an export destination in itself.

Adak is nearly 1,000 Bering Sea miles from the nearest U.S. mainland port--Nome, itself not a deep-water port.

Separately, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has restarted an environmental analysis of a coal-export project proposed for Longview, Washington, nearly a year after state regulators denied the project a key permit.

When asked if he was running for president, Inslee said it was something he would consider but that he was focused on the 2018 mid-term elections, not the 2020 presidential race.

Gov. Inslee spoke with KUOW's John Ryan. Listen to their interview here: