Congressman Bob Inglis: How to Engage Republicans, even Skeptics, on Carbon Legislation

Guest post by Alex Tinker, direct or of civic engagement, Focus the Nation

When the movement for a clean energy future looks for leaders, it often turns to rising activists like Billy Parish, environmental champions like Bill McKibben, outspoken atmospheric scientists like James Hansen, or international environmental justice heroes like Wangari Matthai.

Those who are serious about passing legislation that effectively manages carbon emissions through the United States Congress would be wise to listen to some very different voices: the 163 members of Congress (37 in the Senate, 126 in the House) who represent the “swing” votes that can make or break the effort to address climate change with federal legislation.

Congressman Bob Inglis, R-SC, gave an address for the kick-off event for Focus the Nation’s inaugural civic engagement campaign at Clemson University in 2008 and recently produced this video for the Nationwide Town Hall on Clean Energy taking place this April. In this statement and in a recent speech on the house floor, Congressman Inglis gives invaluable insight into the language and framing that can build consensus on the urgency and opportunity of managing carbon emissions with federal legislation in 2009.Watch the video here, or read the complete transcript.

There are a few key points, and some more subtle messaging, that Congressman Inglis uses that could be of value to advocates for science-based carbon legislation. Each one can teach the movement toward a clean energy future an important lesson.

Key points:

1. Carbon regulation is a national security issue.
2. Climate modeling is complicated, but the chemistry of ocean acidification isn’t.
3. Losing polar bears would be tragic; losing plankton could threaten humankind.

Subtler messages:

1. Oil is an easy target - coming from hostile places overseas - coal is a touchy subject.
2. Fossil fuels aren’t just dirty, they are “incumbent” technologies.
3. Taxing carbon to invest in clean energy doesn’t necessitate a larger government.

Carbon regulation is a national security issue.

It’s a national security issue, it’s an employment issue, it’s a social justice issue, it’s a food issue and an agricultural issue, a business issue and a competitive issue, an environmental issue and an ethical issue. It’s the intersection of a lot of issues, and growing the number of voters and legislators interested in addressing it requires elaborating on more of those issues.

Climate models are complicated, ocean acidification isn’t.

The scientific consensus on climate change and it’s primarily human cause is nearly 100%, but that is based on incredibly complex models that can be challenged on the grounds of their complexity alone. Ocean acidification is a measurable effect of increased carbon in the atmosphere, and the chemical processes by which acid dissolves carbon is based on a simple chemical formula.

Losing polar bears would be tragic; losing plankton could threaten humankind.

While the existence of the polar bear is priceless, the existence of plankton has a price. It has a value easily measured in the amount of economic activity that healthy fisheries generate, and the billion or so human beings who depend on those fisheries for subsistence. Opening a hole at the bottom of the food chain could threaten a significant segment of humankind.

Oil is an easy target - coming from hostile places overseas - coal is a touchy subject.

America is ready to revolt against oil. It comes in large part from overseas dictatorships who we are occasionally at war with, and its volatile price is both a thorn in the side of middle and low-income Americans and a boon to oft-vilified oil companies. Coal, on the other hand, is a touchy subject in Congress, as America depends on it for 40% of it’s electricity.

Fossil fuels aren’t just dirty, they are “incumbent” technologies.

An incumbent enjoys an unequal advantage over challengers or newcomers. Fossil fuel based industries enjoy the advantages of deep political ties and influence, heavy government subsidies, and more than a century of practice at the art of getting their way at the expense of the public. Thinking of incumbent technologies as having an “unfair advantage” and of carbon regulation, which internalizes the external cost of carbon pollution, as a way to give new, clean energy industry a “fair chance” at competing is much more in line with conservative values than fighting “dirty” industries that “hurt” the environment.

Taxing carbon to invest in clean energy doesn’t necessitate a larger government.

While applying a price to carbon may be the most effective way to limit the amount of it released into the atmosphere, carbon regulation is not synonymous with big government. Innovative policies can both increase the price of carbon and reduce other government involvement in the market.

Full Transcript of Congressman Bob Inglis, R-SC, addressing the Nationwide Town Hall on Energy:

“Hey, Bob Inglis here from SC’s fourth district and I’m very excited to be with you. Thank you for doing this nationwide town hall meeting. It’s particularly exciting to have college students involved in this issue of climate change and solutions to our energy future because you’re the one’s who’re going to inspire the change and hopefully in labs across America and elsewhere, discover the solutions we need. So, I’m very excited to be with you and I’m excited about some ideas to pass on to you.

“What I’m finding here in Congress is some people are willing to face the science on this and cope with it…others really don’t want to talk about the science because they want to continue in some sort of state of denial. Well I think it’s getting harder to deny scientific facts about climate change. And particularly if you look at the issue of the ocean it becomes even more clear.

“What I’m trying to convince some of my colleagues of is this: even if you don’t buy the climate problems associated with our dependence on fossil fuels - especially the liquid ones that we use for transportation - even if you don’t buy that, buy the national security problems that we’ve got associated with crude oil and gasoline we get from it. If I can’t get through to them on that, then what I’m left with is trying to convince them of the science as well, and in that area what I’m finding is a lot of dispute about ‘this model or that model,’ and you can basically pick apart climate change models because it’s a great big globe, it’s a huge complicated system, and multiple systems. Modeling that is a very difficult proposition.

“What I’ve tried to do when I encounter somebody who simply wants to pick apart those models is point out to them that what’s happening in the ocean is much clearer. Even if you want to pick apart the climate change models, just consider the very simple equations, chemical equations going on in the ocean. If I’m near one of my science experiment jars, I’ll pull it out and show it to them: this, if you remember maybe seventh grade science, or eight or ninth grade, I don’t know when you did this experiment but you probably did it.

“This is an egg, a normal, regular egg from the grocery store that’s been sitting there in some vinegar. Vinegar, as you remember from high school science, is an acid, and when it encounters the calcium on this egg, the calcium gets dissolved by the acid of the vinegar. This is essentially the problem with carbon dioxide levels rising in the atmosphere and the ocean being a sink for that carbon dioxide. As it enters the ocean, it makes the ocean more acidic and that acidity causes, or will cause, the shells of calcium based plankton do dissolve, like the shell of the egg has dissolved in vinegar.

“What I go on to explain to my colleagues is that ‘wow, what a problem that presents. It’s one thing to lose somebody at the top of the food chain - we don’t want to lose polar bears or animals like that - but, if you open up a hole in the bottom of the food chain, you’ve really got a problem on your hands, because about a billion people depend on the ocean for food. So if CO2 levels in the atmosphere are causing the ocean to become more acidic, and potentially dissolve the shells of the calcium based plankton. We would open a hole in the bottom of the food chain, and the result would be a very serious impact in human life on this planet.

“The beauty of trying to, well, I guess it’s not so beautiful - the egg in the vinegar’s not so terribly beautiful - but the beauty of using an illustration like this, and I would commend you to try it with your friends and people who are doubting the models. Unlike the models which really are very complicated, this is really a very simple chemical equation, and it will happen any time you have calcium coming in contact with an acid. So it’s more certain and something that therefore should cause us to act.

“The thing that I hope also to pass on to you here today is an idea for a policy solution. There’ll be a lot of talk about cap and trade. The problem with cap and trade is that it’s a massive tax increase by itself in the midst of a recession and not very many economists recommend that. And then, it’s also got this problem of Wall Street being very disfavored at this point, and we’re talking in cap and trade of a credit system, and a federal reserve for carbon credits, and all of that sounds very familiar to the problems we’ve seen in Wall Street. If Lieberman-Warner got forty eight votes for Cloture in June 2008, I don’t see it going north of 48, I see it going downhill from 48. Of course you’ve got to get 60 in order cloture in the senate.

“While the democratic leadership may be able to push something of a cap and trade bill through the house, it’ll get over to the senate and stop. I think our goal should be to actually make law, to make progress on this, and to win the triple play of this American century. It’s our opportunity here to improve the national security of the United States by breaking free of this addiction to the fossil fuel called oil. It’s our opportunity to create jobs with new technologies and it’s our opportunity to do something about climate change.

“The way that I’d suggest we win that triple play is something better, I think, than cap and trade. It’s basically this: start with a tax reduction, that’s something conservatives can warm to, and make it a payroll tax reduction, something liberals are excited about. So, you reduce the taxes on payroll, and then in equal amount, apply a tax on carbon dioxide, so there’s no additional take to the government. There’s no tax increase there, it’s reducing one tax, and imposing a tax on something different. It’s reducing taxes on something we want more of which is Labor, Industry and income, and imposing a tax on something we want less of, which is carbon dioxide.

“If we do that, and then apply that mixture to imported goods as well as domestically produced goods, so we’re not simply exporting jobs and exporting the problem, what we can do is change the economics, so that incumbent technologies no longer have a free good in the air, and a free pass on the national security implications of that product. If you internalize those externals, attach those external costs to the products - to the fossil fuels - then the competing technology has a chance to win.

“At that point I think that we can do for energy what Microsoft and Apple did for the PC and the internet. We can break through to a future that’s not dependent on fossil fuels, and that uses newer, cleaner, job-creating fuels that also improve the national security of the United States. It really is the triple play of this American century, and I thank you for being interested in seeing that we get there, that we really do make the play, make it happen, so that we can improve the national security of the United States, create jobs and clean up the air.

“Bob Inglis here, thanks for being here, for being a part of it, and let’s see if we can win this triple play.”