Open Modal

Dems/environmental groups target Republican Senate candidate’s climate statements

Washington Democrats brought out their chief environmentalist to criticize the Republican U.S. Senate candidate’s environmental policy statements.

State Commissioner of Public Lands, Hilary Franz, joined leaders from groups Evergreen Action, the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club, where she showed her support for $369 billion in new federal spending in the Inflation Reduction Act aimed at holding off climate change.  Franz says the just responses to the top 20 environmental disasters alone have cost us nearly $150 billion.  “Do we pay for it in reaction mode, or do we pay for it in true investments”  Franz asked, “that are going to be proactive, helping grow our clean energy economy, helping address our greatest environmental crisis and social and economic crisis of our lifetime, climate change, and truly create the resiliency we need economically, socially and environmentally.”

The group says it came out to dispute Republican Tiffany Smiley’s remarks about climate change.  She says we need to prevent climate change, but she says it’s a battle better fought locally.  Smiley also says that the Inflation Reduction Act’s billions in environmental spending is reckless with inflation looming.  She has also campaigned on U.S. energy independence, which she says we achieved a couple of years ago, but Smiley says the Biden Administration has pushed us backward by pulling the plug on the Keystone XL Pipeline and other moves to block or restrict petroleum production.  As a result, Smiley says we continue to pay high prices for gas at a time when inflation has prices up on everything else.

Northwest Newsradio reached out to the Smiley campaign for comment but had no response by the time this story was filed.

Recommended Posts

Loading...