Former congressman talks climate change in Moscow

MOSCOW — A former Republican congressman from South Carolina is asking political leaders to put their faith in both the free market and government when it comes to slowing the effects of climate change.

Bob Inglis, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for two stints from 1993-98 and 2005-10, visited with local religious leaders to talk about his cause Monday at St. Augustine’s Catholic Church in Moscow.

Inglis is the executive director of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, which is intended to bring conservative principles to climate change solutions.

“We’re trying to show a way for my party to embrace the idea of free enterprise innovation leading to climate action,” he said. “In other words, that we can solve this through the power of the marketplace.”

He said simply regulating American emissions or incentivising clean energy in the U.S. is not enough because it does not force China to change its behavior when it comes to pollution.

“If you can’t get China in, in a way it’s not worth doing,” he said.

That is why his organization proposes putting a tax on carbon dioxide and collecting it on Chinese imports. Then, the government would rebate that money back to the taxpayers or cut taxes somewhere else.

Products made with clean energy will become relatively cheaper for the consumer compared to “dirty” products, Inglis said.

Going down this path, he said, requires faith in free enterprise, as well as trusting Congress to find a way to return that money to the citizens.

“The question is, can we trust the government to actually do that swap?” he said. “What I like to say is, if we can’t, we need to call up the queen and apologize because the experiment of self-government has failed and we need to ask her back.”

Inglis believes this is a solution that conservatives can get on board with. He started the Energy and Enterprise Initiative to communicate climate change issues and solutions in a way conservatives will accept.

“The challenge in climate is the conversation is mostly in the language of the Left,” he said.

Inglis admitted he used to believe climate change was nonsense.

“I didn’t know anything about it except that Al Gore was for it,” he said.

That was the case until pressure from his family and a couple science committee trips to Antarctica and the Great Barrier Reef changed his mind.

Now, he is trying to bridge the ends of the political spectrum to work together on solving the problem.

“Let’s match the sentiment of the Left with a solution from the Right,” he said.

More information about Inglis and his initiative can be found at republicen.org.

Kuipers can be reached at akuipers@dnews.com.