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A conversation with former congressman Bob Inglis.
Bob Inglis was snorkeling in Australia’s Great Barrier reef in 2008 when he had what he called “an epiphany.’’
The then-Republican congressman from a very conservative district in South Carolina had scoffed at climate change throughout his two terms in the House, but his certainty had begun to give way four years earlier when his son told him, upon turning 18, that he needed to “clean up his act on the environment.’’
The comment stung. Inglis was still thinking about it in 2008 during a congressional trip to Antarctica, where he saw researchers extract ice cores that showed steadily rising levels of carbon dioxide since the Industrial Age began. His belief that climate change was a hoax began to weaken.
It was on another fact-finding trip that Inglis toured the Great Barrier Reef. Alongside the Australian oceanographer Scott Heron, he saw that the once-colorful reef was being bleached and killed by warmer, more acidic waters. It was visible proof of the destructive power of climate change.
Heron, a fellow Christian, talked about the need to save the reef and the planet with such passion, Inglis said, that “I could see that he was worshipping God in what he was showing me. My metamorphosis was complete. I decided that I was ready to act.’’
The next year, Inglis co-sponsored legislation to impose a tax on carbon emissions. That “heresy’’ did not go over well in his district, and he was crushed in the 2010 primary, 71% to 29%. (The bill, meanwhile, never made it out of committee.) “I knew that I was making the right choice,’’ he said. “It’s a choice that I’d make again.’’
His newfound commitment to addressing climate change led him to launch a nonprofit group, RepublicEn, devoted to bringing conservatives into the climate conversation. Today, Inglis tours the country, doing about 100 events a year at conservative groups such as College Republicans, Rotary Clubs, hunting and fishing clubs, and local GOP organizations.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You’ve talked about how, as a Republican congressman, you refused to accept climate change because the issue was associated with Al Gore, a Democrat. Do you think that what political scientists call “negative partisanship’’ is a major reason why conservatives still resist action on climate change?
Yes, it is. That’s why we need credible messengers who can speak the language of the tribe and who can make the tribe believe that conservative ideas can add something to this conversation. Conservatives have an undeserved inferiority complex on climate and energy. We understand the concepts of negative externalities and market distortion and accountability. Free enterprise — accountable free enterprise — can fix climate change.
You are referring to the libertarian concept of negative externalities, actions that negatively affect other people. Can you explain how it relates to carbon emissions?
When you burn fossil fuels, you’re basically dumping trash into the sky. You don’t pay a tipping fee for putting carbon waste into the atmosphere and contributing to climate change, so there is an implicit subsidy for burning these fuels and belching carbon — in fact, it’s the granddaddy of all energy subsidies.
Take that subsidy away and everything changes. Virtually all coal would be quickly replaced with natural gas and wind and solar and other methods. If you use a tax to set the real price of carbon, the free market will figure out cheaper and better ways to produce electricity. Things will start happening faster. You’ll see more development of hydrogen and better batteries that don’t use lithium to store the energy created by solar and wind. Climate change is an economic problem. Just fix the economics and innovation will happen. That’s the language of conservatism, and it’s how I talk to conservatives about it.
Why do you believe a carbon tax is the best way to bring Republicans aboard?
It is still the most obvious way to solve climate change, and the most efficient. This is an idea that goes back to Milton Friedman in the 1980s, when he said, instead of trying to regulate polluters, tax pollution. Make them pay for their negative externalities. You tax the trash they dump into the sky, just the way we impose a cost for dumping trash on land. It has to be a substantial tax, and it has to be steadily rising to increase incentives to find other forms of energy that don’t turn the sky into a dump for emissions. If you do that, you don’t need tax incentives for solar and wind — the rising cost of fossil fuels will provide all the incentives they need. But you also need to make this tax apply to other nations and the goods they import into the U.S.
How do you do that?
You can put a tax on the carbon produced in goods imported from China. Sen. Bill Cassidy [R-Louisiana] recently proposed a foreign pollution tax like the carbon border adjustment mechanism the European Union has already adopted. We very much welcome this idea because it’s a way of making the transition away from fossil fuels worldwide. Many Republicans say it’s not fair if the U.S. lowers emissions while China can do what it wants. The beauty of a foreign pollution fee is that it addresses this problem in an efficient way. It creates economic incentives for China to reduce its own emissions.
A carbon tax has been talked about for a long time but has gone nowhere in Congress. Do you see any evidence that it’s more politically palatable today?
I think a carbon tax is like the rescue of the banks after the financial crisis in 2008. Until the banks collapsed, bailing out the U.S. financial system seemed impossible. But when the consequences of not doing it became clear, the bailout went from impossible to inevitable without passing through probable.
Several catalyzing events could propel the carbon tax forward. The most likely is the momentum created by the European border adjustment mechanism, which is really a carbon tariff. Companies in the U.S. who deal with Europe are going to be calling their members of Congress and Senators and saying, wouldn’t you really rather collect that revenue for carbon emissions here at home through a carbon tax rather than sending the money to Europe? At some point, the light will go on at the U.S. Capitol — wow, the Europeans are getting a lot of revenue with a tariff on carbon, and we could do that, too. We could do that to China. We could say, the stuff you are selling here, you have to pay a carbon tariff.
Another momentum-maker is our federal debt. If interest rates stay high, interest will really start eating more and more of the federal budget. I have always said that a carbon tax should be revenue neutral, but given what’s happening to the deficit, it could also provide that revenue. Necessity may force Congress to turn to what used to seem impossible.
Could extreme weather provide another incentive?
Yes, there could be some catalyzing climate event that really focuses the mind. I don’t know what it will be. During the civil rights movement, when Americans saw segregated cities turn the police dogs and fire hoses on protestors, it really turned the tide on Jim Crow. We’ve had so much extreme weather that people are getting desensitized to it, but there still might be a catastrophic event that changes people’s priorities.
This year, we’ve already seen some of the most extreme weather and weather-related disasters in recent human history — massive wildfires that darkened skies across the country, relentless heat waves, fierce storms, and destructive flooding. Do you see evidence that this is registering with conservatives?
A lot of people won’t change their minds because of what a scientist says. But experience is different. Experience is a harsh teacher. You can’t argue with the thermometer. You can’t argue with the yardstick showing that sea is rising. You can’t argue with the water coming into your home. In 2010, when I was getting tossed out of Congress, there was a lot of aggressive disbelief in climate change. People told me, I don’t believe in climate change, and you shouldn’t, either.
Right now, it’s quite different. Conservatives say to me, sure, you can switch to clean energy here, but what difference does it make if you don’t get the rest of the world in on this? Why should we do this alone? That’s when I talk about negative externalities and a carbon tax, and imposing a carbon tariff on China and other countries. That changes their perspective.
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What do you say to The Wall Street Journal conservatives who concede that climate change is occurring but insist that it’s less disruptive and cheaper to invest in adaptation to a hotter, more extreme climate?
Adaptation is a defeatist argument. Good luck building a seawall in Miami-Dade, for example. As sea levels rise, the water there is coming up into streets through the porous bedrock under that area. In South Carolina, go to coastal areas and you’ll see the big stands of pine trees dying because of salt water intrusion. In Montana, the forests are now filled with dead and dying trees because bark beetles that used to die in the winter now survive and go on attacking the trees year-round.
Adaptation won’t work in many places where people are going to lose what they love. It won’t work in New England when maple trees no longer produce maple sap for syrup because the winters are too warm. It won’t work at ski resorts that no longer have snow. When you stop arguing and pay attention to what you’re losing, you start saying, wow, how do we fix this?
Polls show there is still a big partisan divide on climate change. Do you think that can change?
The problem is no longer a lack of information. People can see what is happening. The problem is a lack of validation, and it’s a lack of hope. We need validation from conservative leaders that climate change is obviously real, and that we obviously need to do something about it. And we need to show conservatives that the free enterprise system can provide solutions once we get the true cost of carbon right.
If you keep telling people about all the terrible things happening and that we’re all hosed, it’s depressing. It makes people say, I don’t want to work with you. But if you can come to conservatives and say, we can light the world with new energy sources, and we can have more energy and more freedom and more manufacturing and more jobs — we can have a better world if we act on this. We can have true energy independence, so we don’t need to depend on energy from authoritarian regimes who chop journalists up into pieces. I’d like to be free of those people. I’d like to able to say to the Saudis, we don’t need your oil. Why don’t you see if you can drink that stuff?
The current Republican presidential field is not validating that climate change needs to be addressed.
In the first debate Nikki Haley did say climate change is real, but immediately pivoted to talking about how China and India have to lower their emissions, too. That’s a step forward, but it’s not enough. In 2018, when Republicans lost the House, it dawned on then-Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and some other Republicans that you can’t win suburban swing districts with a retro position on climate change. So McCarthy convened a special Republican conference on climate, and the takeaway was, we need to get with it.
Polling data shows a majority of young conservatives and young evangelicals want action on climate change, and if you want to win in 2024, 2028, and 2032, you need to have a plan that you can talk about. But then Trump decided to run again, and he’s doubling down on climate disputation, and everyone in the party is afraid of the Death Angel. Trump can’t get anyone elected, but if he comes after you, he can get you killed in a primary.
But even if Trump wins, he will be a lame duck by 2026, and then the party is going to ask, where do we go next? My prediction at that point is that Republicans will be tired of reruns of the Trump show and will want a fresh approach that can win over young voters and suburban voters. And if he loses in 2024, that’s when you’ll have the reevaluation.
You’ve said of climate change, “We’re all in this together.’’ That sounds progressive — maybe even vaguely socialistic. Does that message resonate with conservatives who are suspicious of collective action?
[Laughs.] Maybe I should examine that statement more closely. But as a person of faith, I think it is just obvious we are literally in this fight together.
I think you can summon all Americans to a higher cause. I think if we can assure conservatives, I’m not trying to cancel you, and you have ideas to contribute to this discussion about the power of economic incentives, free enterprise, and innovation. You have to make conservatives feel that they have something important to contribute.
You have to make them feel they have something to gain from the solutions. If you the United States makes a bold move on carbon taxes and tells China and other nations, you have to pay a carbon tariff on the stuff you export to us, then it becomes an international effort to curtail emissions. Then conservatives start saying, we’re really talking about realistic and fair solutions. That’s when you can say, we need to take action because we do not want to lose this amazingly beautiful planet. That’s when you can say to them, we’re really all in this together.
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Investing in red states doesn’t make defying Trump any safer.
In the end, it was what the letters didn’t say.
For months — since well before the 2024 election — when asked about the future health and safety of the clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act, advocates and industry folks would point to the 20 or so House Republicans (sometimes more, sometimes fewer) who would sign on to public statements urging their colleagues to preserve at least some of the law. Better not to pull out the rug from business investment, they argued. Especially not investment in their districts.
These letters were “reassuring to a lot of folks in clean energy and climate communities,” Chris Moyer, the founder of Echo Communications and a former staffer for longtime Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, told me.
“I never felt reassured,” Moyer added.
Plenty of people did, though. The home solar company Sunrun, for instance, told investors in a presentation earlier this monththat a “growing number of Republicans in Congress — including 39 overall House members and four Senators — publicly support maintaining energy tax credits through various letters over the past few months.” The company added that “we expect a range of draft proposals to be issued, possibly including draconian scenarios, but we expect any extreme proposals will be moderated as they progress.”
Instead, the draft language got progressively worse for the residential solar industry, with the version that passed the House Thursday morning knocking billions of dollars off the sector, as tax credits were further squeezed to help make room for other priorities that truly posed an existential threat to the bill’s passage.
What Sunrun and others appear to have failed to notice — or at least publicly acknowledge — is that while these representatives wanted to see tax credits preserved, they never specified what they would do if their wishes were disregarded. Unlike the handful of Republicans who threatened to tank the bill over expanding the deduction for state and local taxes (each of whom signed one of the tax credit letters, at some point), or the Freedom Caucus, who tend to vote no on any major fiscal bill that doesn’t contain sizable spending cuts (so, until now, every budget bill), the tax credit Republicans never threatened to kill the bill entirely.
Ultimately, the only Republicans to outright oppose the bill did so because it didn’t cut the deficit enough. All of the House Republicans who signed letters or statements in support of clean energy tax credits voted yes on the legislation, with a single exception: New York’s Andrew Garbarino, who reportedly slept through the roll call. (He later said he would have voted for it had he been awake.)
“The coalition of interests effectively persuaded Republican members that tax credits were driving investment in their districts and states,” Pavan Venkatakrishnan, an infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress, told me in a text message. “Where advocates fell short was in convincing them that preserving energy tax credits — especially for mature technologies Republicans often view skeptically — should take precedence over preventing Medicaid cuts or addressing parochial concerns like SALT.”
The Inflation Reduction Act itself was, after all, advanced on a party-line basis, as was Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan. Combined, those two bills received a single Democratic no vote and no Republican yes votes.
In the end, Moyer said, Republican House members in the current Congress were under immense political pressure to support what is likely to be the sole major piece of legislation advanced this year by President Trump — one that contained a number of provisions, especially on SALT, that they agreed with.
“There are major consequences for individual house members who vote against the president’s agenda,” Moyer said. “They made a calculation. They knew they were going to take heat either way. They would rather take heat from clean energy folks and people affected by the projects.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
White House officials and outside analysts frequently touted job creation linked to IRA investments in Republican House districts and states as a tangible benefit of the law that would make it politically impossible to overturn, even as Congress and the White House turned over.
“President’s Biden’s policies are leading to more than 330,000 new clean energy jobs already created, more than half of which are in Republican-held districts,” White House communications director Ben LaBolt told reporters last year, previewing a speech President Biden would give on climate change.
Even after Biden had been defeated, White House climate advisor Ali Zaidi told Bloomberg that “we have grown the political consensus around the Inflation Reduction Act through its execution,” citing one of the House Republican letters in support of the clean energy tax credits.
One former Biden White House climate official told me that having projects in Republican districts was thought by the IRA’s crafters to make the bill more politically sustainable — but only so much.
“A [freaking] battery factory is not going to save democracy,” the official told me, referencing more ambitious claims that the tax credits could lead to more Democratic electoral victories. (The official asked to remain anonymous in order not to jeopardize their current professional prospects.) Instead, “it was supposed to make it slightly harder for Republicans to overturn the subsidies.”
Congresspeople worried about jobs weren’t supposed to be the only things that would preserve the bill, either, the official added. Clean energy and energy-dependent sectors, they thought, should be able to effectively advocate for themselves.
To the extent that business interests were able to win a hearing with House Republicans, they were older, more traditionally conservative industries such as nuclear, manufacturing, agriculture, and oil and gas.The biofuels industry (i.e. liquid Big Agriculture) won an extension of its tax credit, 45Z. The oil and gas industry’s favored measure, the 45Q tax credit for carbon sequestration, was minimally fettered. Nuclear power was the one sector whose treatment notably improved between the initial draft from the House’s tax-writing committee and the version voted on Thursday. Advanced nuclear facilities can still claim tax credits if they start construction by 2029, while other clean energy projects have to start construction within 60 days of the bill’s passage and be in service by the end of 2028.
“I think these outcomes are unsurprising. In places where folks consistently engaged, things were protected,” a Republican lobbyist told me, referring to manufacturing, biofuels, and nuclear power, requesting anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. “But assuming a project in a district would guarantee a no vote on a large package was always a mistake.”
“The relative success of nuclear is a testament to the importance of having strong champions — predictable but notable show of political might,” a second Republican lobbyist told me, who was also not allowed to speak publicly about the bill.
But all hope isn’t lost yet. The Senate still has to pass something that the House will agree with. Some senators had made noises about how nuclear, hydropower, and geothermal were treated in the initial language.
“Budget reconciliation is, first and foremost, a fiscal exercise,” Venkatakrishnan told me. “Energy tax credits offer a path of least resistance for hitting lawmakers’ fiscal targets. As the Senate takes up this bill, the case must be made that the marginal $100 billion to $200 billion in cuts seriously jeopardizes grid reliability and energy innovation.” Whether that will be enough to generate meaningful opposition in the Senate, however, is the $600 billion question.
A loophole created by the House Ways and Means text disappeared in the final bill.
Early this morning, the House of Representatives launched a full-frontal assault on the residential solar business model. The new language in the budget reconciliation bill to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed Thursday included even tighter restrictions on the tech-neutral investment tax credits claimed by businesses like Sunrun when they lease solar systems to residential buyers.
While the earlier language from the Ways and Means committee eliminated the 25D tax credit for those who purchased home solar systems after the end of this year (it was originally supposed to run through 2034), the new language says that no credit “shall be allowed under this section for any investment during the taxable year” (emphasis mine) if the entity claiming the tax credit “rents or leases such property to a third party during such taxable year” and “the lessee would qualify for a credit under section 25D with respect to such property if the lessee owned such property.”
This is how you kill a business model in legislative text.
“Expect shares of solar companies to take a significant step back,” Jefferies analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith wrote in a note to clients Thursday morning, calling the exclusion “scathing.” Investors are “losing the now false sense of security that we had 'seen the worst' of it with the initial House draft.”
Joseph Osha, an analyst for Guggenheim, agrees. “Considering the fact that ~70% of the residential solar industry is now supported by third-party (e.g. lease or PPA) financing arrangements, the new language is disastrous for the residential solar industry,” he wrote in a note to clients. “We believe the near-term implications are very negative for Sunrun, Enphase, and SolarEdge.”
Shares of Sunrun are down 37.5% in mid-day trading, wiping off almost $1 billion worth of value for its shareholders. The company did not respond to a request for comment. Shares of fellow residential solar inverter and systems Enphase are down 20%, while residential solar technology company SolarEdge’s shares are down 24.5%.
“Families will lose the freedom to control their energy costs,” Abigail Ross Hopper, chief executive of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said in a statement, in reference to the last-minute alteration to the investment tax credit.
When the House Ways and Means Committee released the initial language getting rid of 25D by the end of this year but keeping a limited version of the investment tax credit, analysts noted that Sunrun was an unexpected winner from the bill. It typically markets its solar products as leases or power purchase agreements, not outright sales of the system.
The reversal, Dumoulin-Smith wrote, “comes as a surprise especially considering how favorable the initial markup was” to the Sunrun business model.
“Our core solar service offerings are provided through our lease and power purchase agreements,” the company said in its 2024 annual report. “While customers have the option to purchase a solar energy system outright from us, most of our customers choose to buy solar as a service from us through our Customer Agreements without the significant upfront investment of purchasing a solar energy system.”
The new bill, Dumoulin-Smith writes is “‘leveling the playing field’ by targeting all future residential solar originations, whether leased or owned.” The bill is “negative to Sunrun with intentional targeting of the sector.
Last year, Sunrun generated over $700 million from transferring investment tax credits from its solar and storage projects. The company said that it had $117 million of “incentives revenue” in 2024, which includes the tax credits, out of around $1.4 billion in total revenue.
But the tax credits play a far larger role in the business than just how they’re recognized on the company’s earnings statements. The company raises investment funds to help finance the projects, where investors get payments from customers as well as monetized tax credits. Fund investors “can receive attractive after-tax returns from our investment funds due to their ability to utilize Commercial ITCs,” the company said in its report. Conversely, the financing “enables us to offer attractive pricing to our customers for the energy generated by the solar energy system on their homes.”
Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Perocco wrote to clients that “this is a noteworthy change for the residential solar industry, and Sunrun in particular, which dominates the residential solar [third-party owned] market and has recognized ITC credits under 48E.”
Current conditions: A late-season nor’easter could bring minor flooding to the Boston area• It’s clear and sunny today in Erbil, Iraq, where the country’s first entirely off-grid, solar-powered village is now operating • Thursday will finally bring a break from severe storms in the U.S., which has seen 280 tornadoes more than the historical average this year.
1. House GOP passes reconciliation bill after late-night tweaks to clean energy tax credits
The House passed the sweeping “big, beautiful” tax bill early Thursday morning in a 215-214 vote, mostly along party lines. Republican Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio voted no, while House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris of Maryland voted “present;” two additional Republicans didn’t vote.
The bill will effectively kill the Inflation Reduction Act, as my colleague Emily Pontecorvo has written — although the Wednesday night manager’s amendment included some tweaks to how, exactly, as well as a few concessions to moderates. Updates include:
The bill now heads to the Senate — where more negotiations will almost certainly follow — with Republicans aiming to have it on President Trump’s desk by July 4.
2. FEMA cancels 4-year strategic plan, axing focus on ‘climate resilience’
The combative new acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, David Richardson, rescinded the organization’s four-year strategic plan on Wednesday, per Wired. Though the document, which was set to expire at the end of 2026, does not address specific procedures for given disasters, it does lay out goals and objectives for the agency, including “lead whole of community in climate resilience” and “install equality as a foundation of emergency management.” In axing the strategic plan, Richardson told staff that the document “contains goals and objectives that bear no connection to FEMA accomplishing its mission.”
A FEMA employee who spoke with Wired stressed that while rescinding the plan does not have immediate operational impacts, it can still have “big downstream effects.” Another characterized the move by the administration as symbolic: “There are very real changes that have been made that touch on [equity and climate change] that are more important than the document itself.”
3. Energy Department redirects Puerto Rican rooftop solar investment to upkeep of fossil fuel plants
The U.S. federal government is redirecting a $365 million investment in rooftop solar power in Puerto Rico to instead maintain the island’s fossil fuel-powered grid, the Department of Energy announced Wednesday. The award, which dates to the Biden administration, was intended to provide stable power to Puerto Ricans, who have become accustomed to blackouts due to damaged and outdated infrastructure. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority declared bankruptcy in 2017, and a barrage of major hurricanes — most notably 2017’s Hurricane Maria — have destabilized the island’s grid, Reuters reports.
In Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s statement, he said the funds will go toward “dispatching baseload generation units, supporting vegetation control to protect transmission lines, and upgrading aging infrastructure.” But Javier Rúa Jovet, a public policy director for Puerto Rico’s Solar and Energy Storage Association, added to The Associated Press that “There is nothing faster and better than solar batteries.”
4. EDF, Shell, and others to collaborate on hydrogen emission tracker
The Environmental Defense Fund announced Wednesday that it is launching an international research initiative to track hydrogen emissions from North American and European facilities, in partnership with Shell, TotalEnergies, Air Products, and Air Liquide, as well as other academic and technology partners. Hydrogen is an indirect greenhouse gas that, through chemical reactions, can affect the lifetime and abundances of planet-warming gases like methane and ozone. Despite being a “leak-prone gas,” hydrogen emissions have been poorly studied.
“As hydrogen becomes an increasingly important part of the energy system, developing a robust, data-driven understanding of its emissions is essential to supporting informed decisions and guiding future investments in the sector,” Steven Hamburg, the chief scientist and senior vice president of EDF, said in a statement. Notably, EDF took a similar approach to tracking methane over a decade ago and ultimately exposed that emissions were “a far greater threat” than official government estimates suggested.
5. The best-selling SUV in America will now be available only as a hybrid
Toyota
The bestselling SUV in America, the Toyota RAV4, will be available only as a hybrid beginning with the 2026 model, Car and Driver reports. The car will be available both as a conventional hybrid and as a plug-in that works with CCS-compatible DC fast chargers, meaning “owners can quickly fill up its battery during long road trips” to minimize their fossil fuel mileage, The Verge adds. The RAV4 will also beat the Prius for electric range, hitting up to 50 miles before its gas engine kicks in.
Toyota’s move might not come as a complete surprise given that the automaker already introduced a hybrid-only lineup for its Camry. But given the popularity of the RAV4, Car and Driver notes that “if you ever wondered whether or not hybrids have entered the mainstream yet, perhaps this could be a tipping point.”
Nathan Hurner/USFWS
The Fish Lake Valley tui chub, a small minnow threatened by farming and mining activity, could become the first species to be listed as endangered under the second Trump administration.