This week, Sightline Fellow Yoram Bauman will moderate a panel that should prove fascinating: “Changing What We Tax: Prospects for a Free-enterprise Solution to Energy Security and Climate Change.”

It’s a joint event put on by one national conservative group, the Energy and Enterprise Institute and one state group, the Washington Policy Center. The speakers will include Bob Inglis, a Republican and former Congressman from South Carolina; Todd Myers, director of WPC’s environmental program; and Mike Wallace, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Washington.

Details here:

Date: Wednesday, November 14th, 2012
Time: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Place: Room 109, Otto Miller Hall, Seattle Pacific University, 301 W. Ewing Street, Seattle, Washington.

Bob Inglis is certainly one of the most fascinating people in American politics right now. A bona fide conservative Republican who served multiple terms in Congress representing South Carolina, he’s also been a vocal and articulate climate hawk, one who urges fellow conservatives to hew to the facts of climate science and to embrace carbon pricing as an opportunity to reform national tax policy. You can get a taste of that with this video:

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  • The possibility for action, still remote, seems to be getting louder among conservatives. Slate and Reuters are wondering out loud whether a carbon tax could be part of a “grand bargain” to avert the so-called fiscal cliff in 2013.

    Then just today, the Washington Post editorial board actually endorsed a carbon tax dedicated to deficit reduction.

    And tomorrow, the conservative American Enterprise Institute is hosting a day-long conference on the economics of carbon taxes. (They will post the full video of the day’s events later this week.)