WHATEVER IT TAKES TO ROPE IN THE RUBES:

For a non-scientist who is unsure about the impact of carbon emissions, Kemp has thrown himself into the task of constructing a clean-energy economy with impressive ferocity. A former real estate developer who wears cowboy boots with his suit and scrunches his brow in the fashion of George W. Bush, the 59-year-old Kemp has emerged as a curious figure on the American right: a conservative hardliner whose enthusiasm for tax cuts and guns is matched by his passion for charging stations and battery recycling.

While national Republicans are bereft of a positive vision -- still reeling from the chaos of the Trump presidency and the misery of a disappointing midterm election -- Kemp is a rare actor in his party trying something shrewd and new. Where many Republicans have ignored climate as an issue or ridiculed people who care about it, Kemp has moved aggressively to claim the economic opportunities associated with fighting climate change and then take credit for them on the campaign trail.

His approach is essentially an inversion of greenwashing, the corporate public-relations practice of giving an environmentalist sheen to activities that are anything but. The Georgia governor does the opposite, championing a set of policies that aid the energy transition while insisting his motivations have nothing to do with controlling emissions.

To Kemp, his agenda does not qualify as climate action: "It's just letting the market work."

The green-manufacturing market is working fast in Georgia. Hours before I sat down with Kemp on Wednesday, on the eve of his inauguration to a second term, the Korean conglomerate Hanwha announced plans for a massive solar-panel facility in Georgia. It was the latest in a multibillion-dollar series of economic development trophies Kemp has claimed in the energy sector, including immense investments linked to the electric-vehicle supply chain from companies like Hyundai, Rivian and SK Battery.

In his Thursday inaugural address, Kemp vowed that by the end of his new term, Georgia would be "the electric mobility capital of America." He is headed next week to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, aiming to spread word of Georgia's economic trajectory and its electric-mobility prowess to the globalist conclave. Chuckling, he calls himself the "Georgia redneck going to Davos."

I am more interested in how he sells this agenda to voters on the American right, many of whom are likelier to associate electric cars with Al Gore than with, well, Brian Kemp.

"I'm fulfilling my promise of creating good-paying jobs for our state," Kemp says. "I'll tell you, there are a lot of conservatives that are driving electric vehicles. I'd also tell them: you need to go out and drive one because it'll snap your head back."

He points to the F-150 Lightning, Ford's electric pickup, predicting: "You're gonna have a lot of Republicans driving that truck.

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