My mom’s calling—we talk every day. She asks me if I’ve eaten, and I complain about the usual: essays, exams, horrifying clumps of hair on the shower floor.
I sit on the steps of the chapel, a warm yellow against a silent sky. Durham is chilly tonight. Cloudy, starless, I feel rain coming. My fingers — naked, against my phone and ear —fare worst, somewhere between cold and numb. They crave my pocket’s warmth, and I tell my mother goodbye.
“Wait, Mom, before I go, did you see the climate change report?”
And with a single sentence, cordial relations are over, and little things like “familial love” fall away. Constructed arguments become a battle of volume. Mom, if we don’t do anything, millions will die. But, Jeremy, she says, climate change is natural — and these summits, they’re PR moves, politicians don’t actually care. In the ring, it’s Me vs. Mother, Ali vs. Frazier, Democrat vs. Republican. An hour in, I’ve forgotten the cold — hell, I’m sweating in self-righteous anger.
These little spats parallel increasingly intense partisanship in the United States. Hot-button topics fuel the divide, with gun control, abortion rights, and impeachment splitting Democrats and Republicans along party lines. Particularly contentious is climate change. While 84% of Democrats “consider climate change a ‘major threat,’” only a fourth of Republicans feel the same.
Enter Bob Inglis, former US Congressman and 1981 Duke alumnus. Inglis represented South Carolina’s 4th House district, one of the reddest regions in the nation. Initially, he wasn’t so hot on global warming himself. “For years, I was in Congress saying climate change was nonsense,” he says, laughing. “I didn’t know anything about it except that Al Gore was for it.
But what changed his mind?
“Inglis 2.0,” as he calls it, began with his son in 2004, who pushed him to adopt greener policies. Next was the increasing body of evidence that proved climate change undeniable. But it would take a spiritual awakening to transform Inglis’s views. On a snorkeling trip to the Great Barrier Reef, Inglis met oceanographer Scott Heron. The two were kindred spirits, and in Heron’s conservation work, Inglis saw a love for God. For Inglis, “Conservation became loving God and loving people,” he says.
(Source: Duke University Energy Initiative)
In 2009, he introduced the “Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act” designed to curb global warming. Central to the bill was a carbon tax, which puts a price on carbon-based fuel use. Voter backlash was swift. “They were having a Tea Party— and I was specifically uninvited,” Inglis chuckles. In the 2010 election, he was soundly defeated in a primary race against Trey Gowdy, largely in response to the carbon tax.
But Inglis didn’t stop there. In 2012, he founded republicEn, an organization that promotes free enterprise solutions to global warming. republicEn targets a right-wing audience—those most hesitant to accept global warming.
The core of republicEn is its online community. Thousands of members convene in local events and write letters to Congress advocating a carbon tax solution. Dedicated spokespeople also tour the nation to promote the need for conservative leadership. Both benefit from republicEn’s media wing, which gives conservative voices a platform for climate change.
Inglis firmly believes that conservative solutions are key to fighting climate change. Citing the explosion of smartphones, he poses a question: would the cell phone industry have grown as rapidly had it been intensely regulated? He doubts it. Similarly, he sees free market solutions as the fastest way to slow global warming.
republicEn has no set timeline, no five-year plan. But Inglis is hopeful: “You weren’t there when we marched in Selma, but you can be there when we solve climate change.”
Post by Jeremy Jacobs