The Republicans Who Want Trump to Fight Climate Change
Not everyone interested in curbing climate change is tearing their hair out about Donald Trump's election. Though the president-elect seems to be packing his administration with climate deniers and fossil fuel industry veterans, a small, unconventional band of environmentalists sees potential.
“We hope,” says Bob Inglis, “that Donald Trump sees an opportunity to complete the sentence this way: Richard Nixon went to China, Bill Clinton signed welfare reform, and Donald Trump did climate change.”
In the last several years, Inglis—a former Congressman from South Carolina—has emerged as a spokesperson of sorts for “the eco-right,” a suite of think tanks, activists and politicos making the case for a free-market approach to environmentalism, grounded in conservative values. He now serves as the Executive Director of RepublicEn, a small advocacy outfit of self-described “energy optimists,” keen to dispel rumors that the GOP is the province of climate denialism.
Inglis’s optimism notwithstanding, climate-change activists have ample reason to fear a Trump administration. The president-elect’s pick to run the EPA has spent years challenging the agency in court. And his Secretary of State nominee, the former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, could green light new cross-border pipelines like the
