Time & Perspective Quote by Bob Inglis

Inglis is staging a three-horse race where most politicians would rather chant one mascot and call it a plan. The line reads like an engineer’s briefing smuggled into a campaign cycle: conditional verbs ("could", "could", "I see") replace the usual prophetic certainty. That caution is the point. He’s arguing for optionality, not orthodoxy, and he’s doing it in a language that quietly flatters pragmatists and investors: competition, breakthroughs, winners.

The intent is to de-politicize the energy transition by re-politicizing it as technology. By setting hydrogen, solar, and batteries as "competitors", he reframes climate and energy security as an innovation tournament rather than a moral crusade or regulatory punishment. The subtext is aimed at a skeptical center-right audience: you don’t have to love mandates to love outcomes. If the market is allowed to search, something will "win out". It’s climate action without the word climate.

The context matters: Inglis is a rare Republican voice who’s tried to carve out pro-clean-energy conservatism, often through the idiom of entrepreneurship and national competitiveness. Notice what’s absent: coal, oil, even wind. This is future-facing industrial policy, presented as neutral forecasting. "Supplant" and "replace" also hint at creative destruction - an admission that legacy fuels won’t be politely retired; they’ll be beaten.

There’s a strategic humility here, too. By refusing to crown a single savior technology, he inoculates himself against the inevitable backlash when any one pathway disappoints, and he nudges policymakers toward flexible support: fund R&D, build enabling infrastructure, let the best physics and economics take the podium.