Former WA Gov. Jay Inslee honored with 2025 TIME Earth Award: ‘We must act ourselves’

During his final State of the State address in January, then-Gov. Jay Inslee took a moment to reflect on Washington’s climate progress.

“We’re building a clean energy economy that’s the envy of the nation, thanks to this Legislature,” the Democrat said.

That wasn’t just talk, according to TIME magazine.

On Thursday, TIME magazine announced the winners of its 2025 Earth Awards, which included the former governor of Washington state.

This marks the third year that TIME has honored climate leaders.

In announcing the 2025 awards, the outlet noted that last year surpassed an “ominous milestone” after the planet exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming over pre-industrial temperatures.

Inslee, who served as governor from 2013 to 2025, was acknowledged as a “leader in local climate action.” TIME also noted that he co-founded the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan effort in which two dozen states have teamed up to manifest a clean economy.

The way Inslee sees it, though, the real winner is the state of Washington.

“The award reflects the leadership of our state and the work we’ve done to bring clean energy to our state, the work that voters did by preserving the Climate Commitment Act with an overwhelming vote,” he told McClatchy during a Friday morning phone call.

“The proper awardee is the state of Washington, and I think our state has a lot to be proud of.”

Other 2025 Earth Award winners include actor and environmentalist Rainn Wilson, who starred as Dwight Schrute in NBC’s “The Office,” environmental justice leader Catherine Coleman Flowers and former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican who’s led calls to recognize climate change as a public-health crisis.

In an article published in TIME, Inslee argues that President Donald Trump – who’s embraced the slogan “drill baby, drill” – cannot stop the march of climate progress.

“Local leaders have the freedom to decide what their state prioritizes,” Inslee wrote in the March 27 TIME piece. “We have the ability to pass our own laws, our own investments, our own air-quality standards.”

“Trump cannot stop states from building a clean energy economy. My latest in @TIME,” Inslee wrote on X, sharing a link to the TIME story.

When Trump announced he would pull the U.S. out of the climate change-focused Paris Agreement eight years ago, Inslee wrote, Washington state leaders still advanced large-scale climate policies – sans federal-government restraint.

Inslee mentioned that Washington has worked to limit carbon emissions via a clean-fuel standard, made billions of dollars in investments to help Washingtonians obtain everything from solar power to electric school buses, and green-lit the nation’s most aggressive cap-and-invest law.

Local action, Inslee wrote, can help to counter climate-related inaction or hazards coming from the federal level.

“This is not to say that Trump is not a threat to climate progress,” Inslee added in the article. “His current attempt to cut funding for clean-energy deployment – from EV-charger installations to solar – is depriving us of our clean-energy future.”

He continued: “But rather than waiting for the judicial system to right these wrongs, or cursing our TV screens, we must act ourselves.”

Inslee’s environmentalist spirit was also captured in his official governor’s portrait, unveiled before he left office in January. A glacier-and-snow-covered Mount Rainier stands in the background of the painting, a meaningful detail to Inslee.

The Democrat said at the time that because of the state’s climate efforts, it’s his belief that Mount Rainier will still have snow and glaciers a century from now.

Washington has served a “beacon of inspiration for other states,” Inslee told McClatchy on Friday.

In addition to the Climate Commitment Act, Inslee cited the state’s efforts to help people acquire electric chargers and heat pumps, as well as the implementation of climate-friendly building codes.

The state’s suite of climate policies are unique “because they’ve actually put meat on the bone,” he added.

“They’re not just expressions of intent,” Inslee said. “They’re real implementation of tools that actually work in our moving the needle, and I’m glad that our state is moving forward.”