I get what Frum is saying, but he is getting quite a bit of mileage by overly conflating "conservative" and "Republican". I think the people he is referring to

I get what Frum is saying, but he is getting quite a bit of mileage by overly conflating "conservative" and "Republican". I think the people he is referring to are the Conservative Nationalists, who have struck a tacit deal with the fossil fuel extraction industries (someone let me know if there is a pro-renewables Conservative Nationalist of any significance out there). From a small-c conservative point of view, renewables make imminent sense because of the low cost and the fact that they literally conserve resources. This fits very much with the conservative tendency to save and not spend frivolously. Observing this contradiction really demonstrates to me how much big-C Conservatism in the US is really more about institutionally prolonging and cementing the long term viability of fossil fuels. Everything else seems in service to that goal.