Bob Inglis: Show courage on climate change

America has an exceptional opportunity to prove that accountable free enterprise can solve climate change. The Great Recession dealt a blow to our confidence, but we’re coming back. If we boldly end all subsidies for all fuels and attach all costs to all fuels, liberty and transparent markets will spark consumer-driven innovation.

In order for America to lead on climate change, the unconvinced need to be persuaded that achievable solutions can be found that fit with their values. Climate doomsayers have incanted a future full of fear. Climate naysayers have counseled a clutch of the fuels that have worked for us in the past. The brief shining moment on climate change will come when America finds that achievable solutions are before us —where America always wants things to be.

Such was the brief shining moment when the Congress and the American people bought into President John F. Kennedy’s vision of a moon shot. It could be said that America was more united then. Millions of GIs had marched home from World War II knowing who their vanquished enemies were. They were Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor, not the neighbor across the street with a funny name, a different faith or a different political party. CBS, NBC and ABC gave nearly identical 30-minute newscasts each night. News outlets had editors.

But there were huge divisions too. Governors were defying President Kennedy’s authority to act on civil rights. Joe McCarthy had achieved the infamy of an “ism.” Communism threatened freedom, and nuclear annihilation threatened the whole globe.

Amidst all that, President Kennedy spoke at Rice University on Sept. 12, 1962. Congress had approved his moon shot, and he was in Houston to inspect the progress at Apollo mission control. Sweltering in the September sun, he started: “We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.”

Applying those words to climate change, our knowledge has increased, our ignorance has unfolded, and we’re beginning to see the damage that we’re doing to the remnant of Eden in which we live. We wish to act, but our fears tempt us to deny what we see. We want it to be that we’re not responsible, because responsibility brings guilt, and guilt without redemption brings paralysis. That paralysis brings the stalking enemy of our own creation ever closer.

Just as the threat of nuclear annihilation seemed mostly to lie in the ill wills of Soviet dictators, we can attempt to lay the blame of climate change at the smokestacks of other, more-emitting nations, but we know that it’s our great ingenuity and resources that are needed to solve the challenge. In the face of such a heavy lift, President Kennedy said at Rice, “It is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward. . . .”

Still, those of us who see solutions to climate change should be careful not to belittle those who have yet to see the redemption that those solutions offer. We must lead gently, carefully, persuasively and relentlessly. We must be aware of the costs and ever vigilant to prove the rewards. We must admit with President Kennedy at Rice that “this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.”

Too much has been said about the limits that we must endure. Too much has been intimated about a government that asks more than it should. Too little has been said about more energy, more mobility and more freedom. Too little has been said about the exciting call to light up the dark places of the world with distributed energy systems.

The future is before us. Solutions are within reach just like the moon was within reach in 1962. We’ve just got to choose to go there.

Bob Inglis of republicEn.org represented Greenville-Spartanburg in the U.S. Congress from 1993-1999 and from 2005-2011. On May 3 he will receive the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for working to engage conservatives on climate change.