The U.K’s New Sec­re­tary of Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change, Amber Rudd, has this to say about wind farms: ​“I per­son­al­ly quite enjoy see­ing them.” A Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty MP, Rudd received a pro­mo­tion last month when David Cameron’s Tories beat out Labour. Less bland than her sen­ti­ments about wind farms are her pol­i­cy pro­pos­als for them: They will receive no new fed­er­al sub­si­dies, she says, and deci­sions on whether to build them will rest in the hands of local governments.

As climate denialism begins to falter as a political strategy, Republicans may move to 'apocalyptic warnings about the high cost of government action. That is the GOP’s native territory.'

There­in lies the con­tra­dic­tion of Rudd, a for­mer invest­ment banker and self-pro­fessed ​“Thatcherite when it comes to cli­mate change”: She believes ardent­ly in glob­al warm­ing and the neces­si­ty of mit­i­gat­ing it — so long as those efforts don’t dip into pub­lic coffers.

To U.S. pro­gres­sives, a Depart­ment of Cli­mate Change like Rudd’s might sound like a dream, let alone a con­ser­v­a­tive head­ing it who accepts the real­i­ty of anthro­pogenic glob­al warm­ing. This win­ter, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R‑Okla.), chair of the Com­mit­tee on Envi­ron­ment and Pub­lic Works, threw a snow­ball on the Sen­ate floor to dis­prove the 97 per­cent of ​“eggheads” in ​“sci­ence lab­o­ra­to­ries” who cite evi­dence of cli­mate change. Not all U.S. con­ser­v­a­tive denial­ism is as quaint as Inhofe’s: Oil barons Charles and David Koch have poured $79 mil­lion into talk­ing heads, bogus sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies and front groups like Amer­i­cans for Pros­per­i­ty — all aimed at con­vinc­ing the pub­lic that cli­mate change is a buga­boo. A Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty study found that between 2003 and 2010, con­ser­v­a­tive foun­da­tions invest­ed $900 mil­lion in cli­mate-change denial campaigns.

Despite all this, right-wing acknowl­edge­ment of cli­mate change in the Unit­ed States might not be far off. There are signs that con­ser­v­a­tive elites’ opin­ions on glob­al warm­ing may head the way of their stance on gay mar­riage: Stal­wart opposers will mys­te­ri­ous­ly ​“evolve” their views as it becomes polit­i­cal­ly expe­di­ent. The dan­ger is that the shift will be accom­pa­nied by an Amer­i­can ver­sion of Rudd’s ​“cli­mate Thatch­erism,” in which dereg­u­la­tion and deep cuts to the pub­lic sphere go hand in hand with a move away from fos­sil fuels.

The Tem­per­a­ture in Washington

As Dana Mil­bank, a Belt­way stan­dard-bear­er for the Wash­ing­ton Post, wrote in a recent op-ed, ​“Cli­mate has become one of those issues where the gulf between the insu­lar far right and the rest of Amer­i­can … cul­ture has become so vast that it is serv­ing like a moat, keep­ing out the very demo­graph­ic groups the GOP needs in com­ing years.” Eighty-three per­cent of peo­ple in the Unit­ed States believe cli­mate change con­sti­tutes a ​“very” or ​“some­what seri­ous” threat, and insti­tu­tions from the IMF to Gold­man Sachs are sound­ing the alarm. A New York Times and Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty poll this year found that near­ly half of Repub­li­cans nation­wide sup­port some type of gov­ern­ment action to curb glob­al warming.

Some influ­en­tial Repub­li­cans are tak­ing heed. Alex Lundry, vice pres­i­dent of the con­ser­v­a­tive polling firm Tar­get Point Con­sult­ing, wrote in a Jan­u­ary op-ed for The Dai­ly Caller, ​“If Repub­li­cans insist on lis­ten­ing to those that believe we won’t see the effects of cli­mate change for decades, we are set­ting our­selves up for a polit­i­cal and a pol­i­cy mis­take that will dam­age the par­ty and, more impor­tant­ly, the coun­try.” Toss­ing around the idea of a third pres­i­den­tial run, Mitt Rom­ney said in Jan­u­ary, ​“I’m one of those Repub­li­cans who thinks we are get­ting warmer and that we are con­tribut­ing to that.” Rand Paul, anoth­er 2016 hope­ful, has tak­en a sim­i­lar stance. Soon after Romney’s pro­nounce­ment, 15 GOP sen­a­tors, includ­ing Paul, vot­ed for a res­o­lu­tion declar­ing that cli­mate change is not a hoax and that human activ­i­ty con­tributes to it.

Cli­mate Reaganism

Cli­mate Thatcherites are still Thatcherites, and Repub­li­cans who believe in cli­mate change are still Repub­li­cans. Rudd remains a loy­al mem­ber of Cameron’s cab­i­net, from which Britain can expect, as British com­men­ta­tor Lau­rie Pen­ny wrote, ​“More cuts to pub­lic ser­vices. More inequal­i­ty. More lies.” Sim­i­lar­ly, even if Amer­i­can envi­ron­men­tal­ists could flip some mag­i­cal switch to elim­i­nate cli­mate denial out­right, the reign­ing U.S. aller­gy to reg­u­la­tion and pub­lic spend­ing would remain. While Rudd’s use of catchy phras­es like ​“local con­trol” and ​“sup­port­ing inno­va­tion” may car­ry the rhetor­i­cal punch of bold gov­er­nance pro­pos­als, in real­i­ty they shunt the onus to a pri­vate sec­tor all too excit­ed to step in.

Vox Media​’s David Roberts has done an impres­sive job map­ping the Right’s shift on cli­mate sci­ence and pre­dict­ing its tra­jec­to­ry. As cli­mate denial­ism begins to fal­ter as a polit­i­cal strat­e­gy, he writes, Repub­li­cans may move to ​“apoc­a­lyp­tic warn­ings about the high cost of gov­ern­ment action. That is the GOP’s native ter­ri­to­ry.” Indeed, while there is bipar­ti­san sup­port among vot­ers regard­ing the need for some type of action on cli­mate change, a Jan­u­ary Pew Research poll found that the ques­tion of what such action should look like is more divi­sive: 59 per­cent of Repub­li­cans respond­ed that ​“stricter envi­ron­men­tal laws and reg­u­la­tions have a neg­a­tive eco­nom­ic impact.”

Last month, Roberts inter­viewed lib­er­tar­i­an Jer­ry Tay­lor, for­mer­ly of the ​“cli­mate-skep­ti­cal” Cato Insti­tute, about his idea for a car­bon tax. ​“Tay­lor,” Roberts writes, ​“has pro­posed a grand bar­gain of sorts: in exchange for the elim­i­na­tion of EPA car­bon reg­u­la­tions and state renew­able ener­gy man­dates, Con­gress would adopt a sub­stan­tial and ris­ing econ­o­my-wide car­bon tax, made ​‘rev­enue-neu­tral’ by reduc­ing oth­er tax­es.” Tay­lor went on to argue that this kind of gov­ern­men­tal action is a win-win for lib­er­tar­i­ans, main­stream Repub­li­cans and even cen­trist Demo- crats: Ema­ci­ate the EPA and con­tin­ue mak­ing high returns, all with­out a drop of fed­er­al spending.

In a March 2015 study, ​“The Con­ser­v­a­tive Case for a Car­bon Tax,” Tay­lor lays out a plan for ​“decision[s] about where, when, and how to reduce green­house gas emis­sions [to be left] to mar­ket actors (via price sig­nals) rather than to reg­u­la­tors (via admin­is­tra­tive orders).” Repub­li­can heavy­weights such as for­mer Rom­ney advi­sor Greg Mankiw and Reagan’s sec­re­tary of state, George Schultz, have sup­port­ed sim­i­lar pro­pos­als, and the Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute, a con­ser­v­a­tive think tank, released its own pro­pos­al for a mar­ket-friend­ly car­bon tax near­ly iden­ti­cal to Taylor’s.

Elon Musk, Tes­la CEO and inven­tor wun­derkind, is inclined to agree with such argu­ments. His devel­op­ment of elec­tric cars was par­tial­ly under­writ­ten by a $465 mil­lion grant from the Depart­ment of Ener­gy. After pay­ing it off nine years ear­ly, in 2013, Musk went on to pub­licly denounce the very idea of gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies, clar­i­fy­ing on Twit­ter that he was, in fact, ​“argu­ing against sub­si­dies & in favor of a tax on the end bad cre­at­ed. Mar­ket will then achieve the best solution.”

Musk is among the free-mar­ket ide­o­logues, Sil­i­con Val­ley entre­pre­neurs and Wall Street tycoons who, sens­ing a change in the polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and actu­al weath­er, are dream­ing up mar­ket-based cli­mate solu­tions. By them­selves, these mea­sures are hard­ly nefar­i­ous; some are promis­ing inno­va­tions. Musk’s Tes­la Ener­gy has devel­oped a rel­a­tive­ly afford­able house­hold pow­er source, the Pow­er­wall. Cost­ing just $3,000, the futur­is­tic-look­ing white box could rev­o­lu­tion­ize glob­al access to solar pow­er by mak­ing it eas­i­er than ever to get off the grid. Accord­ing to the Solar Ener­gies Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion, the­mar­ket for solar ener­gy grew by 34 per­cent in 2014. Eager to cash in, Citibank will pour $100 bil­lion into renew­ables by 2025, with Gold­man Sachs pledg­ing $40 bil­lion by 2021.

The Lim­its of the Market

Cast in the right light, these mea­sures could be fod­der for the argu­ment that the free mar­ket is bet­ter suit­ed than the state to take on the cli­mate crisis.

Investors, how­ev­er, can­not do a regulator’s job. As Ever­green State Col­lege econ­o­mist Peter Dor­man points out, invest­ment in clean ener­gy is not the same as keep­ing fos­sil fuels in the ground. ​“If we gen­er­ate more ener­gy from renew­ables, that could just sim­ply mean more ener­gy,” Dor­man tells In These Times:

That in itself does not pre­vent ener­gy being extract­ed from fos­sil fuels. … From a cli­mate sense, the only thing that ulti­mate­ly mat­ters is leav­ing the fos­sil fuels in the ground. I dis­trust the state in almost every way. … I con­sid­er myself to have strong left-lib­er­tar­i­an incli­na­tions. But nobody but the state can do this. It’s always going to be prof­itable for some­body … to dig that stuff up, unless the state pre­vents that from hap­pen­ing and makes it unprof­itable, either by tax­ing the hell out of it, or by requir­ing per­mits [for fos­sil fuel extrac­tion] and putting peo­ple in jail if they dig it up with­out a per­mit.

Envi­ron­men­tal­ists in the Unit­ed States have used con­fronta­tion­al show­downs over fos­sil-fuel divest­ment, Key­stone XL and off­shore drilling to wage a strong — and, arguably, win­ning — moral argu­ment against the coal, oil and gas indus­tries, but they have yet to issue a full-throat­ed call for state action. Now that cli­mate cam­paign­ers are con­vinc­ing the pub­lic of what’s wrong, they may be bet­ter posi­tioned to start demand­ing what’s right.

While pri­vate cap­i­tal will inevitably play a part in the tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fuels, mit­i­gat­ing and adapt­ing to the cli­mate cri­sis will require sub­stan­tial pub­lic spend­ing and robust fed­er­al enforce­ment agen­cies. Right now, those agen­cies are fight­ing for their lives: Between Mitch McConnell’s war on the EPA and the fact that FEMA’s Nation­al Flood Insur­ance Pro­gram is $24 bil­lion in debt to the Trea­sury, the gov­ern­ment bod­ies charged with pre­vent­ing and respond­ing to the cli­mate cri­sis are strug­gling to stay afloat.

Tak­ing on this cri­sis will require a move­ment able to defend reg­u­la­tors and engage the state with pro­pos­als for a liv­able plan­et and a vibrant pub­lic sec­tor. ​“In some sense,” Dor­man says, ​“the mon­ey is already there and has already been there, and the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment has been too polit­i­cal­ly weak to get it.” Annu­al­ly, the Unit­ed States invests $37.5 bil­lion in sub­si­dies to the fos­sil fuel indus­try. That the gov­ern­ment is too poor to pay out for infra­struc­ture and job cre­ation is a fable.

The gru­el­ing bat­tle to con­vince the pub­lic and pol­i­cy­mak­ers of the real­i­ty of cli­mate change is end­ing, a vic­to­ry that can be claimed by sci­en­tists and by orga­niz­ers who have staged mas­sive ral­lies, direct actions and long-run­ning strate­gic cam­paigns. The far more com­plex chal­lenge ahead for cam­paign­ers will be ensur­ing that the tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fuels will have Mar­garet Thatch­er turn­ing in her grave.