ClimateOne

Domestic oil drilling is up, coal use is down, and renewable energy accounts for most of this country’s newly installed electricity generation. While Democrats and Republicans generally agree on the direction of developing nuclear power, domestic drilling and other energy resources, they have staked out very different positions on clean energy, the role of renewables in boosting new technologies and whether burning fossil fuels is driving today’s weird weather.

 

Donnie Fowler, Founder and CEO, Dogpatch Strategies
Bob Inglis, Executive Director, Energy and Enterprise Initiative at George Mason University; former Republican U.S. Representative, South Carolina
Bill Reilly, Senior Advisor, TPG Capital; former Administrator, US EPA
Tom Steyer, Managing Partner, Farallon Capital

 

For Bob Inglis, Executive Director of Energy and Enterprise Initiative at George Mason University, and former South Carolina congressman, climate change is not a belief but a matter of simple, undeniable data. After once stating that climate change was “a figment of Gore’s imagination,” Inglis served on the congressional Science Committee and had the opportunity to see the changes himself in Antarctica. When he switched from being a climate denier to a climate evangelist, he was swiftly kicked out of congress by his own party. “My main enduring heresy,” he said, “was saying that climate change is real. Let’s do something about it.”

 

Donnie Fowler, Founder and CEO of Dogpatch Strategies, spoke of two pressure points. “One is in the primaries where climate change and clean energy have become a litmus test for Republicans.” He said that a very adamant group of right-wing voters control whom Republicans can nominate. The opposite pressure point is with the Washington lobbyists and big old-fashioned energy companies who spend tens of millions of dollars every year and are constantly in the face of Congress and the White House, threatening to run attack ads. “Those two pressure points really scare the policy makers and separate them dramatically from where the American people are.” The truth is, he concluded, “most Americans are pretty unified on their desire for a clean energy economy. I don’t think there’s as much of a divide as we see in the political debate.”

 

According to Tom Steyer, Managing Partner at Farallon Capital, the way energy gets priced doesn’t include a lot of pollution costs, and it doesn’t include any costs for carbon. “If you talk with people bent on fossil fuels, what they really want to do is look at a commodity price that doesn’t include a lot of the costs. And they’re going to fight really hard to keep that cost. They say, ‘we want the cheapest gasoline in the world, and we don’t care what it costs to keep it cheap.’”

 

Is cap and trade an answer? Bill Reilly, former EPA administrator under President George H. W. Bush, and currently senior advisor to TPG Capital said, “We thought it was a good, solid, market-oriented, republican initiative, but it was Democrats we had difficulty persuading that it would work.” It’s the most efficient way to externalize costs, he said. As a member of the board of ConocoPhillips, he stated that that they believe there will be a price on carbon at some point “Everybody does” he said. “Except I guess the Congress.”

 

Why don’t we eliminate all subsidies for all fuels, make it revenue neutral, Inglis asked. “Then watch what happens. Government won’t grow, we won’t have clumsy government mandates and fickle tax subsidies,” he said. “We’ve got the answer. The answer is free enterprise, well-functioning markets, accountable markets.”

 

 

– Lucy Sanna
Photo: Ed Ritger
Climate One, The Commonwealth Club HQ, San Francisco (October 9, 2012)

 

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