Washington Gov Jay Inslee tells COP29 global leaders his constituents are 'miscreants' for efforts to repeal gas tax

On Thursday, Washington’s Democratic Governor Jay Inslee called opponents of his cap-and-tax plan, which spiked gas prices to one of the highest in the US, “miscreants” at the annual United Nations climate conference.

Inslee flew thousands of miles with his staff at taxpayer expense to Baku, Azerbaijan, on the coast of the Caspian Sea and said, "We had some miscreants try to repeal our Climate Commitment Act. We thrashed them. We defeated them."

Tech billionaires, including Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, and Chris Stolte, poured millions of dollars into defeating citizen-backed I-2117 which would have repealed Inslee’s tax.

According to the Capital Press, Inslee spoke on a panel convened by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and on stage for a discussion with White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi and at both events celebrated the defeat of the citizen initiative.

He said, "Why I came, basically, is we don't want the world to get down in the dumps over Donald Trump's ascendancy,” claiming he was inspired to be with other people devoted to stopping climate change because "There is nothing that's ever happened in human history that is more unifying than climate change."

Zaidi said after Inslee’s remarks that the failure of the initiative, whose "confusing verbiage" on the ballot that was cited as part of the initiative’s failure was written by Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson, an opponent of the citizen-backed initiative, "speaks to the wisdom of the state of Washington, but it also speaks to the foresight and leadership of Governor Inslee, so let's give him another round of applause."

The top-ranking Republican on the House Environmental and Energy Committee, State Rep. Mary Dye, told the outlet that funds from the tax have been funneled into government programs but produced no environmental benefits.

She added, "The governor didn't get the memo that real Americans don't like being called names. The governor's policy took almost $3 billion out of the hands of ordinary Washingtonians in less than a year and a half. There's not one good thing about it."