At their root, conservatives’ debt hysteria and climate change denialism are both born of a basic distrust of government. That distrust may not be without its merits, but mistaking science for propaganda certainly is. Unlike debt, global climate change spells existential threats to life on earth: droughts, extreme storms, catastrophic floods, forced human migration, disrupted food supply, species extinction. Some inheritance for the grandkids.

Don’t hold your breath for congressional Republicans to come around to addressing climate change, but it’s important to note that they could do so without sacrificing their principles.

Bob Inglis, the former South Carolina Republican Congressman who currently heads the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, has proposed shifting taxes from income to carbon pollution dollar-for-dollar. The logic is straight out of the conservative playbook: cut taxes on what you want more of – income – and disincentivize what you want less of – greenhouse gasses.

When Ronald Reagan remarked that “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them,” he was expressing a core tenet of GOP ideology: don’t mess with free markets. True conservatives should be pushing to level the energy playing field by getting rid of market-distorting government subsidies to carbon-intensive industries.