Sarah Palin: Energy Maven

We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia?
--Sarah Palin, The Washington Post 7/14/2009

Sarah Palin, in her new incarnation as an I-don't-know-what, has risen like a phoenix from the ashes of her poorly-timed and tearful resignation press conference, and has reemerged as (drum-roll please) an op-ed writer for The Washington Post.

Palin's intentions have never been particularly easy to grasp, but now they're even more ambiguous. She's stepped down as governor of Alaska to ... freelance rail against President Obama's energy plan? That's not even a lateral move, that's a demotion through and through. Now, there's no doubt that many in the state of Alaska -- and therefore Palin's cronies (Palin's pals?) -- would stand to gain a lot by increased domestic drilling, but many people thought that Palin was stepping down to either a) focus on a presidential run in 2012, or b) cash in on her fame through book deals, speaking gigs, or even Playboy spreads. Given her bizarre behavior, the former seems highly unlikely, but the latter seemed to be a pretty good bet. Perhaps this column is a stab at just that, but it appears to be an odd way to go about it.

Even more insidious is the fact that it's misleading. Obama's plan would create jobs, and lots of them, and would do so in a way that would benefit the country and the world. It would also move us forward and hopefully away from fossil fuels. Palin wants more of the same, which is going down a path that is doomed for failure because fossil fuels and natural gas are finite resources. They're not apt to run out in our lifetimes, but there's no time like the present to begin thinking about alternatives. Palin appears to want to torch this.

Also, she's flat wrong. According to statistics from the Department of Energy, the United States imported just over 4.7 billion barrels of crude oil and "oil products" in 2008. Guess which country was far and away the largest exporter to the US? Nope, not Saudi Arabia. Not Iraq, Iran, the UAE, or Venezula either. The answer is Canada, from whom we import 900 million barrels or just under 20% of our crude oil. Saudi Arabia is high, with 550 million barrels or roughly 11.5%, but what about Russia or China? We import 170 million barrels from Russia (3.6%) and China a whopping 6 million barrels (.1%).

Clearly, Sarah Palin is resorting to tried and true scare tactics to further her own and her party's interests. What will the next moves be for the former Alaska governor? Your guess is as good as mine. Stay tuned.

Comments

[PDH5204]

Abe, what's the problem with those words of hers that you use as your intro? If you're trying to sell home energy, do you point to those evil Canadians from whom we must be weaned? Or does she instead point to the former Soviets, the Chinese, and those in the land of Mecca and Medina that fund study halls across the globe that preach nothing but hate and death for every thing we stand for?

And, Abe, you said that alternative energy "will create jobs". Sure, and jobs in the fossil fuel industry will be lost. So where's the number on net job gain or loss?

Re the not within our lifetime, of course not, as the Pacific Ocean covers more than a third of the world and we only drill offshore. The other good news is that I would assume that there is sedimentation occurring at ocean bed, and for a while now, and so we should sooner or later have some more oil for that reason as well.

And why run from fossil fuel? Do wind turbines killing birds and the biohazard that is that huge battery farm paint any a prettier picture? I'm otherwise all for CO2, since I'm the denier who knows that humans get their carbon from the food we first ingest and then digest, while plants get their carbon from the CO2 in the air. So I vent CO2 whenever I can and I call it the greening of the earth.

[Abe Silk - Huffpost Blogger]

PDH,

The problem I have with the words she uses is that they are deliberately misleading. Either that or she doesn't know the facts. Either way, that's disturbing. Granted, there's plenty to be scared about by the far right in Saudi Arabia, the far left in China, and to a somewhat lesser extent Russia. But the fact remains that, as yet, we're simply not outsourcing our energy supply to Russia and China. Not at all. And she claims that we are, or insinuates that we will be. There are no facts to back that up, as I made evident. But she IS using Cold War rhetoric to scare people, and its unwarranted.

Alternative energy is not a panacea, but it will surely create many more jobs than will be lost in the fossil fuel industry. And it's not like we're going off gasoline entirely. Putting people to work to create wind turbines, solar panels, create hydrogen fuel cells, etc. will pull us out of the recession and get is moving in the right direction in terms of weaning ourself from oil, some of which we import from places that are doing bad things. Focusing on drilling more is not a solution, it's a band-aid. We need to do better.

[mychagal]

Awesome Abe. Yours is one of several blogs, today, that blasted Palin's Op-ed in yesterday's Washington Post.. I love it. Keep them coming.

[itstime]

Does Palin even know what "insidious" means? My guess: NOT.
Which just goes to show how ignorant she is - and how dangerous she can be - in the future.

[tm68]

Absolutely she wants us dependent on oil/gas- and she wants us to need ALASKAS oil/gas. Oil people don't want us to explore clean, renewable energy sources. It doesn't matter that the oil/gas are finite resources- they can make money now. Talk about leaving our grandchildren and so on in the lurch! What are they going to do when it runs out? Why put them in crisis mode when we can start to do something now?

[BBHounds]

Who are the people that believe this women? Can't they read or do a little fact checking on their own?

That's what is truely frightening to me.

[Freesia2]

Her next move? Whatever will give her an illusion of motion.

The op-ed for the Washington Post was never intended to be a serious essay on the subject. It was to give her base the image of her as a person serious enough to write essays. Since they likely wouldn't bother to fact check (there's a reason why they're Sarah's base) she could write anything she felt like. As long as it had "written by me, Sarah Palin, Superstar" on the byline.

She'll speak, write (although she doesn't - that article, while was wrong, was written in English as we know it) wave, smile, smirk, wink and pageant walk wherever people who don't know better will give her a veneer of credibility. Being Sarah Palin is her job now. Which takes energy. And that's about all she knows on the subject of energy.

[cgr]

The more she talks (and writes) the clearer it gets she's out of her depth, big time, in politics. That she doesn't get it is even more clearer, as someone said, "she doesn't know what she doesn't know". I think the word for that is clueless. I'm really surprised when she opted out as governor she didn't go right to what suits her better, the entertainment industry or some other place where celebrity without substance can be successful, and lucrative.

Well, I can be content to watch her simultaneously open her mouth and shoot herself in her foot...no mean accomplishment. Also.