A Conservative’s Search for Solutions to Climate Change: Speaking with Former Congressman Robert Inglis

A Conservative’s Search for Solutions to Climate Change

By all outward appearances, former South Carolina Congressman Bob Inglis is a conservative’s conservative. During his twelve years in Congress he earned a 93.5% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union along with endorsements from National Right to Life and the National Rifle Association. Moreover, when he learned one year that he had earned more than a 0% rating from an organization that traditionally supports liberal causes, he says he “demanded a recount.” Despite these solid conservative credentials, Inglis was defeated in the 2010 Republican primary. And he will be the first to admit that his defeat owed, in large part, to the same reason he was recently at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy: He’s in search of policy solutions to climate change.

Early in his career, Inglis was a climate change skeptic. But two events turned him from skepticism and toward finding, in his terms, a “conservative solution on climate change.” The first was a conversation with his son, who had recently turned 18, and would for the first time have the opportunity to vote for his father, but not without a condition.  “My son said to me, ‘Dad, I’ll vote for you, but you got to clean up your act on the environment.’ His sisters and mother agreed and so, I mean, that’s a pretty important constituency to please.” The second was a series of trips to Antarctica where he met Donal Manahan, a marine scientist based at the University of Southern California, and Scott Heron, a NOAA scientist studying the impact of climate change on Australia’s coral reef system. From that point on Mr. Inglis became a leading, if lonely, conservative voice in favor of taking action to address climate change.

At a lecture sponsored by the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago (EPIC), Mr. Inglis said he believed that in order to effectively address climate change we must “end all subsidies for all fuels and attach all costs to all fuels.” 

This approach, he suggests, makes it possible for the market place to properly judge fuels and methods of energy production against each other, which should please Republicans who favor meritocracy. And because all fuels are treated the same, Mr. Inglis asserts it is an egalitarian system that ought to appeal to Democrats as well. 

During the question and answer period, some audience members questioned whether removing subsidies for alternative fuels actually creates a level playing field given that the infrastructure needed to support the production of fossil fuels already exists.  Others questioned exactly which costs would be attached to fossil fuel production and delivery: is it limited to domestic costs, or does it include international costs; does it take into account the cost of military activities necessary to protect fuel supplies?

When asked how he responds to those who criticize him for believing in climate change, Mr. Inglis responded, “Well, first, I tell them that I don’t believe in climate change because climate change is not worthy of belief; it is proven science.”

“We are very fortunate to have Congressman Inglis here to share his vision for our energy future,” said Robert Rosner, EPIC co-director and the William E. Wrather Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. 

“The only way we’ll meet our future energy needs and spur economic growth, while limiting environmental and social damage, is through practical and efficient public policies. And the only way we get those policies is through open, honest dialogue about the problem at hand. Bob Inglis gets that and we are better for his work on this important issue.”

-By Dominick Washington