S3E3: A State Blueprint to Build Resilience

Disasters like the wildfires in Southern California have destroyed homes, displaced people, and are costing the country hundreds of billions of dollars to recover. It raises the question: how can we proactively invest to protect our communities from the impacts of extreme weather and natural hazards? Washington State has looked to answer this question through its Climate Commitment Act (CCA). Passed in 2021, it has generated and reinvested $500 million across the state to reduce emissions and leverage technology to mitigate harmful and large-scale wildfires and other disasters. We speak to Joe Nguyen, one of the legislative proponents of the CCA, to discuss the program’s impact across Washington State and how other states could adopt similar initiatives to keep their communities safe and resilient.

Joe Nguyen is the director of Washington State's Department of Commerce. He was elected to the Washington State Senate in 2019 and was chair of the Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee. He also served as vice chair of the Ways and Means Committee.  

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Transcript

Melissa Sosinski: Just a few weeks ago in January, we got heartbreaking news about the Pacific Palisades wildfires in Los Angeles. 

News clips: “17,000 acres with no containment, been burning since about 10:30 on Tuesday morning.” … “The medical examiner’s office confirming that 24 people have been killed due to the wildfires in Los Angeles.” …“It’s just wild looking at the map of Los Angeles and thinking about how many thousands of people are displaced.”

MS: The news that day and in the days and weeks that followed has been devastating. I have family in the LA area, and while thankfully they made it out OK, many lost homes. People have died, thousands displaced, and AccuWeather reports that the cost of rebuilding is expected to be between $250 [billion] and $275 billion.

Disasters like this are unfortunately becoming both more frequent and severe, and it’s made a lot of people think about how we can become more resilient and mitigate the harm that these disasters do to our communities. It’s got me thinking too about a presentation I heard last year at COP29 about how Washington state passed a piece of legislation that has built community and climate resilience.

Joe Nguyen: “Over the last 7 years, there has not been a summer where you had choking smoke in major metropolitan areas. Generally speaking, before then, you’d have major brush fires in rural areas, but we were starting to see very clearly the intensity that happens as well. Last year was the first time that we didn’t have major smoke and wildfires in Washington state in over a decade and part of why that happened was because we, like you said, invested about $500 million in what we call the Climate Commitment Act towards wildfire mitigation.”

The Climate Commitment Act was signed into law in 2021, and this legislation looks to cap and reduce greenhouse emissions and invest in climate resilience programs across Washington state. 

Just now, you heard Joe Nguyen, who was then a state senator and chair of the Washington State Senate Environment, Energy, & Technology Committee. He was a key proponent of the Climate Commitment Act, so I started to think—how exactly has the $500 million from the CCA reduced wildfires across the state, and are there ways to replicate policies and investments to help make other states more resilient?

This is Empathy Affect, Fors Marsh Media’s podcast that explores the human side of government. I’m Melissa Sosinski, and fortunately, Joe Nguyen joins us today to walk us through these very questions. Our interview with him, y'all, was on the day he resigned as a state senator to join Governor Bob Ferguson’s administration as director of the Washington Department of Commerce. There, he’ll be rolling up his sleeves to put the CCA to work. So, what better time to ask Director Nguyen about the CCA in action and how we can learn from it to protect our communities from climate change and natural disasters? 

Director Nguyen, it's such a pleasure to have you on Empathy Affect today to talk about the work you've done in the climate space and the legacy of the Climate Commitment Act in the state of Washington. Thank you for being here. 

JN: Thank you so much for having me. 

MS: Of course. So, you started serving as a state senator in Washington in 2019, and soon you'll be serving as director of the state's Department of Commerce. So, congratulations. But we'll get into a little bit about your position change later in the conversation. First, I wanted to just get to know what inspired you to step into public service in the first place. Can you walk me through your journey and what sparked your legislative focus on environmental issues? 

JN: First off, thank you so much and I appreciate the opportunity to share. So, I'm an immigrant from Vietnam. My family are from Vietnam. I was born here. I grew up in a low-income area where oftentimes our needs were not prioritized when it came to resources as it relates to the state, the county, or even the local cities as well. So, I grew up most of my life kind of seeing what happens if you don't get the access and resources that are important to your communities.

And really, I think like [for] a lot of people in 2016, the national politics was so divisive and vitriolic that I felt like I needed to be able to step up and help, and kind of how that manifested was we had an incident locally in our community where a young man was killed by law enforcement. And I didn't want to just be yelling—I wanted to be able to actually help figure out what happened. So, I spent my time, you know, working with his family, working with law enforcement, working with political leaders to organize a forum to really have, kind of, this empathy-centered kind of process. So, that way, they understood what was happening and how we can manage through that. 

And that really kicked off a lot of the advocacy that I did at that point. I had done some work on housing and homelessness, so I saw kind of the need in my community. But I will say the genesis of all of that was actually [that] my family struggled growing up. My father was in a car accident when I was a kid, and because of that, we relied on a lot of support from our communities. So, I've always wanted to give back, knowing that my existence was really because of the people in my community. So, the opportunity came up to run for office in 2018, which, for those who don't know, in Seattle, you kind of have this backlog of people who want to run for office. And I was not supposed to be a contender. I was not supposed to win. I ran against 11 people in a very tough race. And, fortunately enough, you know, knocking on 29,000 doors, talking to community, I was able to win pretty handily with 58%. So really, my whole impetus is: how do we ensure that the people that we are tasked to serve and represent are actually being addressed—and not just folks that are generally already in power? 

MS: I know we're going to talk about climate, but it's such a cross-cutting issue. And I can see how it overlaps a lot with the different things you just teed up there. And speaking of which—in 2021, Washington state passed the Climate Commitment Act. So, for those who aren't aware, can you walk us through some of the key elements of the legislation and, you know, what it aims to achieve, especially in terms of disaster mitigation and community resilience? 

JN: Yeah. So, the Climate Commitment Act basically is a market-based mechanism. You've seen versions of it in California or Quebec, where you have a cap on emissions and folks can, through auctions, buy credits to comply. So, there's a carbon market associated with it. So, the idea is that you have these targets that go down over time, and the first few years are pretty aggressive. They're benchmark versus the Paris Agreement. So that way, over time, your top emitters—those that have 25,000 metric tons or more—are covered entities and they have to decarbonize or they have to pay for compliance. So, there will be a point of equilibrium where it's going to be too expensive for them to comply. So therefore, they need to be able to decarbonize. And there's two folds to that. You have that mechanism to decarbonize. But you also then have the resources through these auctions to do it in a way that is just and do it in a way that is fair. 

So, the vast majority of the 80-page bill that we have goes towards investments in our communities to help people in a just transition. Thirty-five percent of the resources from that bill has to go through underserved communities, and 10% specifically has to go to our tribes. So, when you look at the people most impacted by the historical problems and harms of pollution, we want to prioritize them in the future as well. 

 MS: That's fabulous. We're talking now about a week after the devastating news of the LA wildfires—so wildfire mitigation, resilience, and recovery are largely on people's minds right now. I actually reached out to you because I initially saw you present at COP29 last year, sharing how the CCA has helped protect Washington from wildfires with a combination of investments, data, technology, and strategy. So, can you walk me through what the role of the CCA is in the evolution of Washington's approach to wildfire prevention and response? 

 JN: Yeah. You know, it's so unfortunate to see what's happening in LA. We had our fair share of devastating wildfires in Washington state over the past few years, and it wasn't an accident that last year was actually pretty calm. We didn't have any major wildfires that we had had specifically, previously. And a lot of that was because we use a very data-driven approach to understand the implications of climate change on wildfire. Things are hotter. Things are drier. There are areas that we know are more susceptible. And if there's high winds, there's going to be a problem. 

So, what we ended up doing was learning from our mistakes and being able to partner with our utilities to ensure that utilities are shut off if there's a wildfire risk. We did other things as well, where we're managing forests in a way that is sustainable—that doesn't have underbrush, that's going to be field. And some of the more important things that we did that were pretty innovative. We deploy technology throughout our state, so in areas that we knew were high-risk, there are actually cameras that are out there powered by AI. And what they do is they scan the forest, and if they see any signs of smoke or any signs of wildfire, that automatically notifies. We have a team of three across Washington state—they’re mobile air fleets, and they basically have flame retardant ready to go at any time when they know that there's a high risk. So [when] they see the beginnings of a wildfire, they'll send a plane out and drop them and deploy them right away. And we also have firefighters deployed across our state, because sometimes at high winds, the air method doesn't quite work. So, we have data, we have technology, and we have the resources to be able to do it. And that was thanks to $500 million from the Climate Commitment Act to make that all possible as well. 

So, it's unfortunate to see what happened in LA, and I'd really love to learn from what happened there to make sure that we harden our systems as well. But I think some of the models that we've deployed in Washington state that have been proven to be successful can certainly be replicated. And, in fact, we actually have those plans down in California right now helping out. 

MS: Wildfire mitigation is tough, and our hearts go out to those recovering in LA. It’s made me reflect on the importance of mitigation, and I’m glad that Director Nguyen showed us how the CCA is helping Washington state fend off wildfires. Just to give you a sense of the impact, the Washington Department of Natural Resources found that large fires impacted 174,300 total acres and 44,000 forested acres across the state in 2023. While that seems like a lot, that acreage is significantly lower than the most recent 10-year average of 470,000 total acres—about two-thirds less. 

Now, wildfire mitigation is just a piece of the work of the CCA, so I asked Director Nguyen how else the legislation is impacting communities across his state and what it looks like in action.

JN: I'll highlight a few in the sense of, oftentimes, electric vehicles are seen as luxury items for the wealthy, where only the wealthy are able to actually access clean transportation, which we know is not true. We want to make sure that folks have access to it as well. So, part of the funding that we had was towards this program, where if you're a low-income household, you can actually lease or buy a car subsidized. So, we have people across Washington state where they have a brand-new EV, and they're leasing it for $75 a month. So now, you have people who can really focus on their livelihoods and not just on the transportation sector. 

What's interesting, I was actually at a barbecue, not in Seattle, outside of Seattle, so a more conservative part of town, where I was invited to. And I had this guy come up to me. He knew who I was, and he knew that I cared about the Climate Commitment Act. And he said, “Hey, I was going to I was going to vote to kill that thing.” But what's interesting is that he has this forest on his property, out in what's called by “lakeshore land,” where they actually had wildfires, and he said, “So I went to go visit the state forest manager, and they said, ‘there's these resources for you to maintain your land. So that way thought a wildfire risk.’” It would have normally cost tens of thousands of dollars, but the state was going to cover a portion of it because they wanted to have sustainable lands and him being safe. And then they said it's because of the Climate Commitment Act. So, he himself benefited from something like this. And he, I would assume, is a bit more conservative than me, [but] because of that, switched his role and said, actually, we want to keep this thing because we're doing a good job. 

And we also have folks—you know, where I come from, it's a Superfund site. So, Duwamish, in the area where I come from, is the nexus of industry along our waters. So, it's one of the Superfund sites for the United States. It's also where the airport is, and it's also where the port is. So, there's drainage trucks that go across these areas all the time. And I grew up with asthma, and I didn't realize it because  I was next to this highway. So, we're putting money towards charging infrastructure and electric drainage trucks. We're cleaning up, remediating some of the issues that are there. We put a park in next to a community that didn’t have a park there before. And then also we put air quality monitors in what's called Beacon Hill, which is a flight path. 

So now, we're able to not just understand the impacts that we have on our communities, but also specifically alleviate them in a number of different ways as well. I can go on all day. But I think if you look at, kind of, what we're able to do with these resources, it's transformative and largely led by people of color and tribal communities. 

MS: Yeah. I mean, so many great examples to just really illustrate and bring it to life. You were just mentioning that you were diagnosed with asthma. And I know that previously, you've said publicly that growing up next to a highway has impacted your diagnosis. So, it's quite the personal example of how pollution disparately impacts certain individuals. 

And before, you were saying the car requires 35% of investments to support overburdened communities by pollution and climate change. So, I guess, just getting down personally, how did growing up where you were inform your lens on environmental disparities? And can you go a little deeper into how the state's working alongside these overburdened communities to shape the way the CCA supports them? 

JN: Yeah. You know, I would not have called myself a climate activist before going into politics. I cared and I knew about it, but I wouldn't say that I was with the [Greta Thunbergs] in terms of, like, being on the forefront. But really, it's always been in the back of my mind since I was a kid. 

So, my family were refugees from Vietnam. They came from a fishing village, and fishing and food and seafood was a big part of our culture. And I remember being a kid—5, 6 years old—and my father and I would go down to this dock on the Duwamish River. And I remember he was crabbing for shellfish, he was fishing. At that point, I was just learning how to read, and I saw these signs that said, “Don't eat the shellfish because it's poison.” And that was one of the first times that I remember the nexus of our actions as humans has an impact on the environment, and actually it was bad for us as well. Now you go down to the same place, they have that in multiple languages. 

And like you said before too, living next to a highway, I didn't realize that me having asthma and a number of my classmates having asthma was certainly a part of the built infrastructure that we have there. So, it's always been in the back of my mind. And the funny part was, in the legislature, I work on a number of things, so I was actually not known for my climate work until about my third or fourth year, when everybody kind of paused and said, “Look at all these bills that passed in the climate space. It was actually Senator Nguyen that did it all,” because I was doing some other things as well. 

So largely, where it happened for me is—you know, I'll be honest with you—in politics, a lot of people talk about doing good things. Very few people actually do it. So, what happened for me was I knew that this was important. I knew that I wanted to prioritize it. I saw a lot of people talking about it, which I thought meant that they're working on it. That wasn't the case. And I wanted to step in, and I wanted to say, “Hey, these are policies that we have to pass. They're very tough. They're very difficult, very nuanced. How do we actually make them work?”

And I slowly got more involved—clean infrastructure for our transportation sector, everything from more decarbonization strategies with energy siting. How do we ensure that our buildings are more efficient like that as well? And then I'm also the chief budget writer to the CCA. So, I've helped allocate $2.4 billion in investments for our state. So, for me, [in] climate activism, if you really want to make change, it’s actually kind of boring, right? Like you have great people pushing the narrative, ensuring that the climate conversation is front and center. You also need a layer of people who are technical, who can understand, “okay, how do you translate advocacy into progress?” And that's where I fit in. And it turns out I'm not bad at it. And it became part of this core portfolio that I had over the last few years. 

MS: Yeah. I mean, it's been an immense success. So, I'm just thinking, Washington has been able to accomplish this. So, what aspects of the CCA do you think are most replicable for other states, and what advice would you give legislators or activists in other states who are looking to enact similar policies? 

JN: Yeah. You know, what's interesting is people oftentimes think that climate policy is a Democratic policy. Seven counties in Washington state that voted for Trump also voted to keep the CCA. So, if you do this correctly, if you show value, this is a bipartisan effort. And I think a lot of what was beneficial for us is that you have to show value pretty quickly. 

The investments that we made were strategic. The investments that we made were based off of community input all over, and the investments were made in a way so that way people saw benefits pretty quickly as well. So, I think that value is key. The other component, too, is that this was a broad coalition, right? The coalition that fought to keep the Climate Commitment Act included labor, included business, included community advocates, included conservatives as well. And not to say that it's a monolith and everybody agreed on everything, but folks understood the value and the economic output of having a clean economy. 

In Washington state, we’ve been innovators in aerospace. We've been innovators in technology. And people see that being an innovator in clean energy is going to be important for us as well. So, we married the nexus between economic development with climate action. And we did it by including a broad-based coalition, and it was not easy. So, in politics, having a large caucus like that is very difficult to manage. But you have to do it to be able to show some success. [MS10] So, I think that was the fruits of the labor of the bill that we had, and that was the fruits of labor of the investments that were made. And because of it, now we have this mandate to do more, but also to do it in a thoughtful way. 

MS: I know that you sort of just touched upon it in your answer and earlier on, but, last year, Initiative 2117 was on the ballot in your state to repeal the CCA, and as you mentioned, voters ended up rejecting the ballot measure in November. But even before the CCA was passed, there were multiple failed attempts to pass it in the years prior. So, what did the introduction and, ultimately, the rejection of the initiative teach you about the value of building trust and fostering collaboration across political lines? 

JN: Yeah. So for context, like you mentioned, there were multiple attempts to have a carbon market in Washington state that failed until the Climate Commitment Act came along. And personally, I've seen it in my short time in politics so far, that you may have a good idea, but if you have hubris or ego, that can certainly tank it, right?

And you have to ensure that you talk to people who disagree with you to build a product that people can agree with. So, the carbon markets that were previously proposed did not make it for a variety of reasons, and this one did. And the key difference is that coalition that we built. We wanted to make sure that everybody saw themselves in climate action. And this just wasn't a leftist activist thing that we wanted to do. That was the key for us. 

And the interesting thing is I have quotes about this. When that initiative was first starting to repeal the work that we had done on climate change, I actually said, “Good, I'm thankful that they're doing it. Like, I'm happy that they're doing it, because I feel so convicted in the benefits of this system that once we have to defend this on the ballot, the rest of Washington state's going to understand how important this is as well, and it's going to solidify the support for this.” 

Like, we won by such a wide margin that even Republicans are like, “You know what? They're right. Let's just keep doing it.” So, it was important to me to showcase the value of that work. And that's what didn't happen last time. There were previous efforts at carbon markets that [were] done by initiative, that [were] done on the ballot, that failed, that they only spoke to other progressive advocates [about]. They didn't talk to any business members. And that's why I failed. The tweaks that we made to ensure that the CCA was of value to the vast majority of Washington state didn't diminish the work that was being done in the policy, but it did show folks that they were part of the conversation. It's something that they can see themselves in as well. I think that was the key.

MS: Absolutely. We've talked a lot about the CCA and the work you've done in the Washington Senate. But as we mentioned at the top, you're now moving on to the state Department of Commerce as its new director. It's quite a big move. So, how are you feeling about it, and where do you hope to continue addressing environmental and community resilience challenges in Washington in your new position? 

JN: Yeah. First off, I'm so excited. I now have the opportunity to lead an 800-person team with a $7.9 billion budget. So, this is certainly a big deal. And what's interesting is that a lot of that work for the Climate Commitment Act, after we passed it through the legislature, after we allocate the funding—Commerce is actually the agency that implements all of that work, whether it's the investments, the capital side, the operating side, and even some of the policies with energy siting. All of that is through Commerce. 

So, the opportunity for me to go from the legislative side to tossing things over to the agency to implement these policies is a tremendous honor. And first off—our Governor Ferguson. I'm very thankful for his foresight in being able to help me to this role. So, the thing is, people often talk about climate change policies from a political lens, from “This is a bill. We have to pass this bill.” Oftentimes, people don't actually go to the next step and say, “Did they did they actually do it? Did they do a good job implementing that bill? Did they actually invest that money for the communities that they said that they were investing in?” And the answer usually is no. And candidly, if you look at the Commerce budget right now, I think there's billions of dollars that we sent them—maybe 10% has been spent, and some of that has been sitting since 2019. 

So, I actually think that I'll have more of an impact on decarbonization and climate change policy as an agency lead than I would as a legislator because, as you can see, we have no problems with legislators agreeing that climate change is real and that we have to address it. We do have problems with agency heads understanding the value of what we're doing and being strategic about how we implement it. 

So, the work actually doesn't stop, right? The Energy Office is through Commerce. The housing and the building, decarbonization, are through Commerce. All of the investments for the Climate Commitment Act, minus some, are through Commerce. So, I’ll also be doing some of that work, just not on the policy side. 

MS: Going from the legislative to the executive side of things, what are you excited about now in terms of being hands-on in moving the needle forward in the climate space?

 JN: Yeah. So, you know, we talked a little bit about how I'm relatively new to politics. So, it's funny going into these spaces and seeing kind of how entrenched people can be sometimes, where I actually feel very confident we can add a lot of value quickly just because there's a mindset and a culture of saying no within agencies. 

I've already had a couple of instances where I've had some people who would be reporting to me pretty quickly say, “Oh, we can't do that because the legislature told us no, because of these reasons.” And I'll actually have to say, “Actually, that was my bill. I'm the one that wrote that language. And I know that it is possible because I said it was possible, and that's why we passed it. “

So, the idea that I have to go in and then translate legislative policy into the agency, and you have this kind of culture of fear and “no,” oftentimes hinders a lot of the work that we do on climate change. So, I'm very excited to move into this space, push things forward, give people the confidence that we're doing it correctly, and then also giving cover to my team, because there's a lot of very passionate, good people that are there, but they’ve operated under this culture of fear for so long. 

So, hopefully we can change from a culture of “no” to a culture of “yes” and get us to decarbonize society faster. 

 MS: Excellent. I love the culture of “yes.” We need more of that.

JN: Yes.

MS: Now, as we're almost parting here, how can our listeners get involved or support initiatives to promote climate and community resilience across their own communities? 

JN: Yeah. So, my background is not in politics. My first time getting involved in politics was running for office and winning. And what I'll say is a lot of places, and most places that I've seen—federal, local, county, state, doesn't matter—fear is a very big motivator in terms of whether they do something or whether they don't do something. 

And a lot of times when you look at climate policies, especially if it's cutting-edge, a lot of places don't want to do it because they are scared that it might go wrong. So, our goal in Washington state is to show that there is a model, and there's a blueprint. We're already seeing it. I've had folks in the UK reach out, in Australia, in New York, in Michigan—I've heard from places all over, across the globe—people who want to implement some of our policies.

So, my biggest thing that I would say is, as you're advocating and as you're pushing for climate policies within your own communities or local jurisdictions, you're going to start hearing people say, “Well, we can't do that because of…” and then you later hear the excuses. You can point back and say, “Well, Washington state did it, and it was actually bipartisan,” or “Seattle did it, and it was actually bipartisan. They were able to make it work here. How do we fit that into here?” So, don't let people make excuses for why we shouldn't act on climate change. We should, and we can. And a lot of times you can do it without even saying “climate change.” I just say, “Energy siting. We need more energy for our manufacturing facilities to be able to exist. If they're all green, that's great. That's what I want.” So, there's a lot that you can do within your communities just to raise awareness. But now you can raise awareness and show that there's an example of what success can look like.  

 MS: Definitely. Senator Nguyen—or should I say “Director” now? Thank you so much for sharing your story on the show today. It's been so great to hear about the efforts you've helped to usher in across Washington. Hopefully, some other states may be able to adopt some of the lessons from today's conversation. And of course, best of luck in your new position. 

 JN: Thank you so much, I appreciate it.

MS: I’m excited to see what Director Nguyen does next as he transitions to the Department of Commerce in Washington, and it’s been great to learn from him about how proactive investments in resilience and disaster mitigation can help prevent billions of dollars of damage and protect our communities’ wellbeing. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the CCA and what it looks like in action across Washington state, we’ll have some links in the show notes for you to check out.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Empathy Affect. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, make sure to subscribe, follow, and share the show with a friend. And don’t forget to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. Stay safe and well, and I hope you’ll tune in next time. Thanks, y’all.