Edi­tor’s Note: Yes­ter­day, found­ing NPI board­mem­ber Gael Tar­leton, a com­mit­ted cham­pi­on for envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, was hon­ored as Wash­ing­ton Con­ser­va­tion Vot­ers’ Leg­is­la­tor of the Year. The fol­low­ing is the text of Gael’s accep­tance speech, which she deliv­ered from the stage at WCV’s Break­fast of Champions. 

Hel­lo Wash­ing­ton Con­ser­va­tion Voters!

Thank you for believ­ing we must take on cli­mate change.

Thank you for going on offense to bring renew­able ener­gy choic­es to our state.

Thank you for this hon­or. I am so deeply grate­ful to be select­ed as your leg­is­la­tor of the year. I nev­er had a plan to take on the strug­gle to com­bat cli­mate change.

But my sis­ters have told me it was inevitable that I would decide to go climb the high­est moun­tain. That I’d see the chal­lenge of mov­ing beyond a fos­sil-fuel econ­o­my and say: “I am going to give it all I’ve got to win this race.”

We’re in a dif­fer­ent kind of race now.

For the past thir­ty years, we’ve been run­ning a marathon.

Now? It’s time to sprint.

Non­stop. For the next decade.

I love the ocean. I grew up on the Atlantic coast, rid­ing the waves and hang­ing out at the har­bor to watch the fish­ing boats in a small town called Man­ches­ter-by-the-Sea in Mass­a­chu­setts. This is why – when my hus­band and I moved to Seat­tle in 1990 — we chose to live on the salt­wa­ters of Shils­hole Bay with the North Pacif­ic Fish­ing Fleet right down the road.

We moved here for my hus­band to get a PhD at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington.

But that was just an excuse. The real reason?

The call of the wild salmon and steelhead.

Every year, we’d leave our desk jobs at the Defense Intel­li­gence Agency in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. and take two weeks to fly-fish, hike and explore the Pacif­ic North­west. What we discovered?

The mag­ic of the Olympic rainforest.

The awe of spawn­ing salmon rac­ing between our legs to get upriver.

The mys­tery of the pink salmon runs every odd year in Puget Sound and Elliott Bay.

The mania of the chum salmon runs at mid­night on Hood Canal.

And so we head­ed west for good, leav­ing our jobs, fam­i­lies, friends, and D.C. behind us. Near­ly thir­ty years lat­er, I am des­per­ate­ly try­ing to fig­ure out how we move beyond fos­sil fuels.

How we pre­vent more cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate events from dec­i­mat­ing our communities.

How we pro­tect peo­ple’s health with clean air, clean water, and clean food.

How we save orcas, wild fish runs, the ocean, forests, rivers, and wheat fields from dev­as­tat­ing droughts, fires and hot­ter tem­per­a­tures year-round.

The era of cli­mate melt­down has arrived.

Now we must act – not just talk about chang­ing the path for­ward – but take the new path for­ward. I will sup­port Wash­ing­ton Con­ser­va­tion Vot­ers, our part­ners, and my col­leagues to get a low-car­bon fuel standard.

I will give it all I’ve got to have Wash­ing­ton State get to a one hun­dred per­cent clean grid by 2030… because even if we only get to nine­ty or nine­ty-five per­cent, it’s bet­ter than set­tling for sev­en­ty percent.

I will keep fight­ing to pro­tect Ini­tia­tive 937, because it is help­ing our state adopt clean-ener­gy solu­tions in every community.

And we must pass Ini­tia­tive 1631 on Novem­ber 6th and put a fee on car­bon pol­lu­tion at long last. There is so much to do. It is hard to imag­ine victory.

But I go to work every day with my Mom’s favorite say­ing run­ning through my brain: Carpe Diem. Seize the day.

We must fight every day, for the rest of our lives, to save the Sal­ish Sea so that it is still home to whales and salmon and trib­al tra­di­tions gen­er­a­tions from now.

We must move to a way of life that does not depend on fos­sil fuels.

Here’s to all of you. Let’s go win this fight for our future.

Thank you so much.