editor’s note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity

when then-recent college graduate luke bolar stepped on capitol hill  working for sen. chuck grassley (r-iowa) then rep. steve scalise’s (r-la.) offices, never would he think the climate divide would spin out into what it is today. 

bolar now works as the chief external affairs officer for clearpath, a conservative organization focusing on solutions to produce more clean energy and lower emissions but with a focus on innovation over regulation. but bolar has said that since the cap and trade debate emerged from the american clean energy and security act in the late 2000s, division on the topic of climate change has only widened in american politics. 

read the interview with bolar below.

maggie rhoads: i mainly want to spend this interview talking about the american clean energy and security act. can you just talk a little bit more about what that means?

luke bolar: that was the big piece of legislation that would have created a cap and trade system that was probably started as a concept before 2009 and then really came to congress as something that was debated in 2009. it would have essentially created [a system] where you force certain technologies like more renewables onto the grid and cap emissions from others.

a cap and trade system allots a certain amount of greenhouse gas emissions allowances that companies must adhere to, given the amount of allowances they may purchase.  

lb: in some cases, it would have made it really hard to continue using [non-renewable energy technologies]. from our perspective at clearpath, that’s not the right system because we think the ability to scale up a new technology of any kind, if it’s low emission should be accelerated and supported.

mr: ok, so it was mentioned that 2008 and 2009 was a turning point in terms of how climate change has become so divisive. can you talk a little bit more about that? 

lb: i started my career on capitol hill, and climate change was not political. i was fresh out of college, writing press releases for a republican lawmaker about how we needed more wind energy to lower emissions. we need more renewable fuels because they would reduce dependence on foreign sources of oil and gas and lower emissions. 

then, you start getting into the cap and trade legislation, which was a policy dispute because of how it was structured. most republicans opposed that policy, and as part of the political lexicon and the debate at the time, the republicans who opposed that piece of legislation were labeled as climate deniers or anti-climate solutions, which wasn’t really the case. and then it escalated from there. now, over the last five years, that’s starting to change back into depoliticizing climate and just the lexicon of climate change. 

mr: and just to confirm you’re saying that there’s an effort now to depoliticize climate action. how exactly have you seen that?

lb: a lot of republicans in congress talk about the concerns they have that climate impacts can have. you also saw that from president trump’s nominees for the energy-related agencies, the environment, the environmental protection agency, the department of energy, and the department of interior. administrator lee zeldin, secretary chris wright, and secretary doug burgum all got asked about climate change in their confirmation hearings, and they all addressed it in a way that, yes, climate change is real. we should focus on what they see as viable solutions. 

mr: and you would say that those who tend to be more left leaning said, ‘oh, because you’re not supporting this solution to climate change, that means you’re against the climate.’ 

lb: that’s very fair to say. that was pretty well documented, with plenty of news media and congressional testimony from democrats who would make that case at the time. and that continued for the next decade.

mr: do you think that climate change should be a controversial issue? or no?

lb: i don’t think it is. we actually do a lot of polling. i just ran a nationwide survey recently, and 6% of the american public doesn’t think climate change is happening. you don’t have many people in this country who believe climate change is not happening. based on that, it’s not controversial. the solutions can be controversial. and when you get into economic viability and technology, there will be policy disagreements, and that’s good. and if you think those are controversial, that’s okay, but i don’t. 

mr: but is it being covered in a controversial manner because of the solutions that people are proposing?

lb: [the controversy] may have started before a false narrative of fossil energy versus renewable energy. that gets covered as if you’re not all in on renewables, then you’re not for climate change. or if you support fossil energy, then you’re not for climate change. we think that’s a false choice. that’s a false narrative. 

we produce fossil energy in america cleaner than most of the rest of the world, and we think there are great technologies to continue to make those technologies produce even lower emissions. and that’s what i’m talking about with our innovation agenda, lowering those emissions from fossil fuels because fossil energy doesn’t cause climate change. it is the emissions from them. if you can find ways to lower emissions, you can ultimately see a world where we will continue to use fossil energy in a way similar to what we do today. 

mr: clearly you’re arguing for a deregulatory way to approach climate change, but where is the compromise? where are you willing to compromise on what you stand for? 

lb: yeah, i don’t call it a deregulatory agenda. we are thinking of modernizing the regulatory system. many of the environmental laws in place today were written in the 1970s. we needed strong environmental laws, and those were actually, in most cases, written and implemented by republicans. 

at the time, there were a lot of environmental concerns that we needed to address, and we put good, strict laws in place. but how we build and produce energy today is obviously different from the 1970s, so we look at regulatory policy as modernizing it and keeping pace with the newer technologies, not deregulating. having good environmental standards in the us is important, so it’s about modernizing that deregulation.

mr: yeah, but where’s the compromise?

lb: there’s going to be a great compromise when you look at permitting. regulatory policy has many different directions to go, but based on how you permit an energy project, if you ask a democrat or a republican, should we update and modernize how we permit an energy project? both of them will say yes, we should. 

there is a broad compromise on the need to improve how we permit projects, which would be regulatory policy. so there already is a general consensus, a general bipartisan consensus. now, you get into some of the nuances and some of the specific laws. how do you change those? that’s when you start to get into some of the disagreements, and, again, that’s part of the process, and that’s ok.

mr: do you think compromise and bipartisan support are the same thing? 

lb: they can be, but not necessarily. good policy needs to be politically durable, which means it needs to be bipartisan. and so oftentimes, that does mean compromise, but it doesn’t have to mean compromise. it may be a different approach, or we could get to some piece of what i would have wanted in a different vehicle, legislatively. they’re different, they’re similar, they can be the same in legislation, but not exactly the same.