In the tanks
As the new director of energy policy at the R Street Institute, a conservative think tank, Catrina Rorke hopes to persuade fellow conservatives that a tax on carbon pollution is sound policy. She knows that particular effort will be an uphill climb. But Rorke, 30, a Long Island native whose parents are both nuclear engineers, tells me she will also be advocating for policies that enjoy significantly more support on the Right, including cutting regulatory red tape and increasing natural-gas exports. “A big part of what I’m going to do is find ways to identify R Street as conservative on energy,” she says. “It’s helpful to be able to tell our friends that we agree with them 99 percent of the time.” Rorke, a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Columbia University, joined R Street in April, after nearly four years at the American Action Forum, a “center-right” policy research group.
