Washington Monthly | Will Conservatives Come to Grips with Climate Change?
Will Conservatives Come to Grips with Climate Change?
For the moment, however, Inglis has taken on the arduous task of bringing his party back to him. Last summer, he founded the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, a nonprofit organization based at George Mason University, focused on convincing conservatives, particularly young ones, that climate change, caused by carbon pollution, is a serious threat—and on pushing for the carbon-tax swap as a fundamentally conservative economic solution. Since last fall, Inglis and a cohort of conservative economists have made their case at a dozen events, including talks at colleges and universities in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, and Mississippi.
Like I was saying earlier, this kind of work is the most important in American politics. (Florida conservatives ought to be especially interested.) Whatever policy the economists and scientists come up with, conservatives will almost certainly be able to strangle it in Congress or kill it in the courts. Bringing conservatives to the table would be a hugely positive development.