Former congressman Bob Inglis spoke to the Syracuse University chapter of College Republicans about possible conservative solutions to climate change on Wednesday night. 

About 40 students gathered in the Hall of Languages to discuss a proposed carbon tax solution, which would charge carbon dioxide emitters for polluting the atmosphere. republicEn.org, a grassroots movement dedicated to free market solutions to climate change, supports the plan. Inglis is the organization’s executive director.

Inglis served as a representative for Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina from 1993 to 1999 and 2005 to 2011. He started republicEn.org in 2011, and it has since grown into a community of 9,000 people. His goal is to encourage conservatives to debate solutions surrounding climate change rather than ignore them, Inglis said. 

Ben Mutolo, a SUNY-ESF sophomore and republicEn.org spokesperson, joined Inglis for the talk. Carbon emissions are causing climate change disasters, but companies who are responsible for the emissions aren’t paying for the damage, he said.

Instead, people are paying for the climate disasters through taxes, Mutolo said. The republicEn.org proposal would force fossil fuel companies to pay for their own emissions. 

Mutolo describes himself as an “ardent get-off-your-lawn-conservative Republican.” His concern for his changing home environment in Vermont contrasted with his political ideology, he said. 

“The politicians my family voted for kept telling me not to worry about the change, it’s nothing,” he said. “But it became hard to ignore when the well that supplies all the water to my house dried in July, so my family was without water supply for several weeks.”  

The tax proposal also calls for carbon dividends, which could provide more of an incentive for the public to emit less carbon, Inglis said. If a carbon tax gets placed on a household, they will get taxed for the amount of carbon used. But they would be paid for the amount they don’t use. Lower use of carbon dioxide would result in fewer taxes and more money returned to the household, Inglis said. 

“We might just bring Americans together to make a solution to climate change, but that can’t happen without conservatives,” he said. “Conservatives are the most important people on the planet right now when it comes to fixing climate change. The left has gone as far as they can go.”

Inglis received backlash for including climate change as a legitimate issue in his 2010 election campaign for Congress. But Republicans are more aware of the issue now, he said. The 2008 recession sparked major doubt surrounding climate change, but now the economy is stable enough to introduce energy changes, he said. 

A decade of disagreement surrounding climate change ended on Feb. 6 when the Republican members of the U.S. Committee on Energy and Commerce said the committee would focus on realistic issues to climate change, Inglis said. 

His passion for climate change grew during his visits to Antarctica and Australia. Inglis, a self-proclaimed devout Christian, described his visit to Australia as a “spiritual awakening.” His main motivation, however, came from his son, who told Inglis that he would be a better congressman if he prioritized climate change. 

“He said, ‘Dad I’ll vote for you, but you have to clean up your act on the environment,’” Inglis said. “Not everyone has a son or daughter like that, so it is up to you to ask questions and think of solutions.”

Published on October 16, 2019 at 11:08 pm

Contact Abby: akweiss@syr.edu | @abbyweiss_21