DETROIT Jay Inslee stood out the moment he walked into the fluorescent-lit room of the Kemeny Recreation Center in southwest Detroit.

Here was this 6-foot-2, blue-eyed WASP in a trim charcoal suit, Clark Kent glasses and a thick Pacific Northwest accent surrounded by dozens of casually dressed Black and Native American activists from Michigans most polluted ZIP code.

And yet Inslee seemed at ease, like hed been here before.

Thats because he had just two days earlier. As part of his long-shot bid for the Democratic nomination on a promise of throwing the full might of the American presidency at averting climate catastrophe , the 68-year-old Washington governor made a point of visiting the 48217, home to Michigans only oil refinery, a coal-burning power station and a handful of emission-belching industrial plants. He chose this forgotten, highway-bound corner of southwest Detroit to announce his $1.2 trillion plan to deliver environmental justice to poor, polluted communities across the country.

When community leaders invited all 20 Democratic presidential candidates in town for the debates to visit on Wednesday morning, only three Inslee, former Rep. Beto ORourke (D-Texas) and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Juli n Castro agreed to come. ORourke and Castro, though, canceled at the last minute. And so there was Inslee, back again.

The 2020 primary is filled with straight white men over age 45 with almost no shot at the nomination and no clear reason to run. Why would voters choose an RC Cola centrist like former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) or Montana Gov. Steve Bullock when theres Coca-Cola Joe Biden? Does anyone really need New York Mayor Bill de Blasio when theres Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)? Like Inslee, all of them are polling at 1% or less.

But to write off Inslee as yet another quixotic also-ran would be blind to what his campaign has already accomplished. Since launching as the self-declared climate candidate in March, the governors campaign developed one of the most prolific and sophisticated policy shops in the race. Unlike Andrew Yang another fellow low-polling candidate who made his debut Wednesday night as the doomer, declaring were already 10 years too late to avert climate disaster Inslees team has cranked out nearly 200 pages of dense policy offering a detailed blueprint for how to cut planet-heating emissions and secure millions of lives at the rate scientists say is required to maintain a recognizable planet.

Warren electrified the debate Wednesday when she interrupted Delaneys rant against the fairy-tale economics of promising Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. I dont understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really cant do and shouldnt fight for, she said.

Heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere just hit 415 parts per million for the first time in over 3 million years, and global emissions are still surging .

As a result, July was the hottest month in human history. A wildfire larger than Massachusetts is raging in Siberia. The Greenland ice sheet spewed 197 billion tons of meltwater into the Atlantic Ocean in just four weeks.

Now consider how humans are already faring. An Indian city of more than 10 million is poised to run out of water. After New York Citys poshest and most touristy areas suffered a blackout amid a heatwave last month, the private utility intentionally cut power to poor, minority neighborhoods to avoid another such incident. Miami is bracing for a weekend of paralyzing floods now so routine that the citys leading newspaper prints headlines like this: Turn Around and Dont Drown, Weather Service Says. Its Going To Be That Kind of Day.

Inslee has a lot to talk about.

This requires the full mobilization of the country, Inslee said by phone Friday. It really requires a president whos committed to that level of prioritization to get this job done. Thats why Im running for this office, and this office exclusively.