RepublicEn or RepublicEnron? (Bob Inglis’s futile crusade for carbon taxation)

Voters blasted climate alarmism at the ballot box earlier this month, just as South Carolina Republicans voters fired Rep. Robert Inglis for his climate alarmism back in 2011. Yet, Obama-like, the now head of Energy and Enterprise Initiative at George Mason University has launched a new website, republicEn.org and written an inaugural blog post about the post-election prospects for enacting a carbon tax.

In trying to sell Republicans on a carbon tax to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, Inglis insists on calling himself a Republican and free-marketer. Since 2012, his EEI has engaged in ” a nationwide public engagement campaign promoting conservative and free-enterprise solutions to energy and climate challenges.” Wiki also describes his work “to build support for energy policies that are true to conservative principles of limited government, accountability, reasonable risk-avoidance, and free enterprise.”

Dear Sir: Either you are a climate alarmist or not. Either you are for or not for regulating (pricing) the free good carbon dioxide (CO2). Either you are for giving government a wholly new revenue source or not. On all counts, you qualify as either a Left Democrat and a Green Party member.

Republicans have spoken time and gain. They want nothing to do with climate alarmism, cap-and-trade, or carbon taxation. Enron and Ken Lay, on the other hand, were at the forefront of the CO2 regulation racket in the late 1980s and 1990s. Thus Inglis’ RepublicEn should be renamed RepublicEnron.

Consider these quotations, Mr. Inglis.

“[Enron was] the company most responsible for sparking off the greenhouse civil war in the hydrocarbon business.”

– Jeremy Leggett, The Carbon War (London: Penguin Books, 1999), p. 204.

“I don’t know of any evidence to suggest that larger and larger accumulations of greenhouse gases–and particularly CO2 emissions–in the atmosphere has any–and I do mean any–beneficial effects for our globe and mankind.” (4)

– Ken Lay, “If Natural Gas is the Fuel of the Future, When Does the Future Start?” Presentation before the Independent Petroleum Association of America, May 7, 1992.

Here is Bob Inglis’ post, a study in double speak and misdirection, for your postmodern musings.

Since 2011 we’ve been crisscrossing the country, learning from conservatives about free enterprise solutions to climate change.

Conservatives have told us the solutions to climate change will come from economic growth at home and abroad, innovation and cleaner energy technologies—all driven by free enterprise and individual freedom. They want conservative leadership on climate change. They want to gather into a community so that the world will know many conservatives are ready to enter the competition of ideas when it comes to climate change and energy liberty.

Until now, free-market conservatives haven’t had a place to come together to change the conservation about climate and energy. That’s why today, we’re launching…

republicEn.org is for energy optimists—folks who believe that free enterprise can light up the world faster, better, cheaper than government ever could.

republicEn.org is for climate realists—folks who know it makes sense to prepare, to conserve, to innovate, to get China “in” on reducing emissions and to enter the competition of ideas rather than leaving our energy and climate future to those who would attempt a regulatory solution.

The timing couldn’t be better as far as we’re concerned. On Election Day 2014, Republicans won the majority in the Senate and increased their majority in the House, creating a huge opportunity for real conservative reform.

Governing brings responsibility, of course, and it also brings opportunities—exciting opportunities to offer free enterprise solutions on everything from health care to climate change.

Now’s the time to step up with free-market solutions and show the country that clean air and clean-energy innovation are best achieved by accountable free enterprise, not big government.

By joining republicEn you’ll be connecting with conservatives and other free-market conservationists who are ready to lead, ready to replace stultifying regulations with dynamic price signals, ready to show that free enterprise can stoke the engines of American innovation and curb risks of climate change.

The Energy and Enterprise Initiative will be supplying the republicEn community with compelling content that you can use to build the republicEn community and to start changing the conversation where you live. We’ll hold events and create opportunities for you to get involved in free-market climate leadership at a national level and at the local level.

What republicEn becomes, though, is more about you than about us. It’s your passion that’s going to awaken the champions of free enterprise to step up and solve climate change.

Are you En?