I want to start this piece by sharing some bittersweet personal news. After almost 5 years, I’ll be stepping back from my day-to-day work with C3 Solutions to pursue another opportunity close to my heart.
As I reflect on this journey and my work with our talented team led by Drew Bond, my co-founder and President, and Nick Loris, our Executive Vice President of Public Policy and Executive Director of C3 Action, I couldn’t feel more gratified about what we’ve built and where our broader movement is headed. At a time when it’s all too easy to find dysfunction in politics, the work we’ve done on the right to raise the level of debate about climate and energy solutions will produce positive change and durable results for years to come.
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A critical meeting in this journey came in December of 2020 when U.S. Representative John Curtis (R-UT) invited Drew and me to meet with his team. Curtis was getting ready to launch what would become the Conservative Climate Caucus and wanted to meet “before he got too far down the road.”
When we met, I described the successes and failures I had witnessed from my time on the Hill in areas like spending and health care and praised his strategic wisdom in helping the right offer a positive vision about what it was for, not just what it was against. Drew shared what he learned about innovation while working for the Department of Energy under George W. Bush and as an entrepreneur. Drew also echoed the wisdom he learned from one of his mentors, Ed Feulner, who often spoke about the need to grow a movement through addition and multiplication rather than subtraction and division.
We all took a leap of faith and put the words “conservative” and “climate” together in our names knowing full well it would be a record scratch – but conversation starter – to many in the conservative movement. Our gamble and work paid off. The House Conservative Climate Caucus now includes more than 80 members; its founder, Rep. Curtis, is on his way to becoming the next Senator from Utah, and C3 Solutions continues to put out stellar policy analysis in the climate and energy space.
C3 Solutions advisor Yuval Levin wrote an excellent book called A Time to Build around the time we launched. His way of framing the permanent work of building and restoring institutions inspires me. As I look ahead, I’d offer three thoughts about what we can build.
First, it’s time to dream big about nuclear power.
When I interviewed MIT’s Kerry Emanuel in 2021 he said, “We have a very, very clumsy nuclear regulatory apparatus. Everybody knows it – Congress is actually trying to reform it, it’s not like nothing’s being done, but it’s happening too slowly. We’ve lost many, many years of innovation from that. We’ve made nuclear too safe. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission demands that plants be built to withstand a 1 in 10 million year event. That’s crazy! We don’t have any idea how to estimate a 1 in 10 million year event. It’s been made too safe and therefore too expensive and has driven us to depend much more on dangerous sources of energy.”
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The good news is that Congress has taken steps to improve the regulatory regime around nuclear energy with legislation like the ADVANCE Act, and we’ve seen new reactors come online at Vogtle and planned restarts at the Palisades and Three Mile Island plants. But the pacing problem Emanuel noted is still with us. Again, the pace is certainly improving, but it’s still far too slow. The lost years of innovation are a tragedy and can only be redeemed by creativity and ambition.
If the electorate and policymakers wanted to reach for a “break the glass” solution to climate change it would feature nuclear, including Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). I’m not in favor of subsidies to move this process along (in fact, subsidies can slow innovation), but Emmanuel offered a helpful thought experiment in an essay entitled Nuclear Salvation. He argued that to reduce and mitigate climate risk, we should transition to emissions-free nuclear as quickly as possible. Emmanuel estimated that the gross cost of this transition would be $500 billion per year, with total savings from health benefits being $400 billion, coming out to a net $100 billion annual cost through 2040, which is 0.1 percent of Gross World Product (GWP). In the scope of the world economy, that is a manageable cost. In fact, more than a decade ago, my late boss Tom Coburn estimated the annual cost of duplicative programs was about $100 billion.
However, a more likely scenario, already underway, will be for tech companies to turn the energy needs associated with data centers into a regulatory bulldozer. The economic imperative of expanding and deploying AI will be too great to justify slow-walking SMR deployment.
Others will follow that bulldozed path. If investors, policymakers, and regulators can move heaven and earth to put SMRs next to data centers, why shouldn’t farmers and ranchers be allowed to do the same? I own a 62-acre farm an hour from DC and would love to put an SMR on my land. As a landowner, why should I not have that right? Why not revitalize rural communities and help farmers survive by helping them diversify? And why stop there? Why not put SMRs in abandoned shopping malls and everywhere and anywhere in between? Why dream small when we could dream big?
Of course, making this dream a reality will require rethinking how we define utilities, building where power is needed, and a significant commitment to grid infrastructure. But it’s doable, especially if one believes that climate change is an existential crisis.
Second, our marquee product at C3 Solutions is our “Free Economies are Clean Economies” report, which shows that free economies are twice as clean as less free economies. Our report shows a correlation, but I believe there is causation at work that deserves further analysis and investigation. Innovation doesn’t come from government and top-down command and control mandates or subsidies, but from free people who can unleash their creative potential.
Third, and finally, conservatives should know it’s okay to wear their heart for environmental stewardship on their sleeves. For too long, conservatives were afraid of talking about the environment because they would be seen as leftists or de facto advocates of top-down, government-mandated environmental policy. We should never self-censor our convictions and allow tribal politics to eclipse our beliefs about what is true.
Had I not become a landowner, Drew and I would never have started C3 Solutions. I’ve learned that property rights are the beginning of property responsibility and a lifetime journey of stewardship.
I describe the process of owning land in two words: aching joy. On every walk, I feel a sense of wonder and gratitude and develop a deeper intimacy with our land. And I know that even when our kids are ready to move on to something more “fun,” we’re still building something together. Unsurprisingly, science is telling us that staying connected to nature is good for our mental health.
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Every walk also reveals the maintenance burden of owning land and a long list of to-dos that require a lot of action and planning. But part of that process is also about letting go and surrendering, deciding to be grateful, to rest in the joy of exploring the land, and realizing we’re attempting to manage a vastly complex ecosystem while simultaneously doing what we can to leave the land better off. That balancing act is aching joy.
On a parcel called The Meadow, there’s a stubborn ash tree I call the Last Ash: It has lost its limbs but refuses to fall. An invasive species called the emerald ash borer laid waste to ash trees on our land, and each walk is a patrol for new invasive species that could threaten other trees. But we also get to watch the 1,100 trees we’ve planted grow and mature, and few bring more joy than a small grove of plum trees our friends at the American Conservation Coalition (ACC) helped us plant. And then there’s a tree we’ve passed many times. My youngest recently discovered that has a “face” when viewed at a certain angle.
Our work at C3 Solutions will help people see big concepts like climate and freedom from a new angle. In any field, every walk can be full of discovery, gratitude, and longing. And that journey never stops.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.
