Half-Baked Alaska

She was for it before she was against it. (After she didn't believe in it.)

Aside from incessant twittering, we hadn't heard too much from Sarah Palin since her courageous decision to abandon her position as governor of Alaska. At the time, her spokesperson insisted that working on energy issues would be one of Palin's top priorities going forward.

Well, sure enough, Palin popped up on Tuesday with an op-ed in the Washington Post denouncing the President's clean energy and climate plan ("cap and tax" in tea bag speak). The piece continued the tradition of both Palin and the Post's opinion pages not letting the facts get in the way of re-hashing tired, discredited arguments about clean energy legislation. Here's a few tidbits.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that Palin only thinks of "energy" as meaning two things: fossil fuels and nukes. She decries job losses that would come in the "energy sector," as she defines it, yet also attacks the more than $4 billion to help certain workers transition into the clean energy economy.

This myopic viewpoint also ignores two important facts. Wind already employees more people than coal mining in this country. And the fact that the clean energy plan passed by the House is projected to create some 1.7 million jobs (net of any jobs lost in the old, dirty energy economy).

She also fundamentally (willfully?) misunderstands that addressing our energy challenges is not about making energy "scarcer," as she alleges the president's plan will do. What the plan is about is, first, making our energy cleaner -- which will slash carbon pollution, reduce our dependence on dirty fuels like coal and oil, and free us from the wild price spikes associated with fossil fuels. Second, it is about slashing the amount of energy we waste in our homes, offices, schools, and factories every day. This will also not only help make us more energy independent and slash emissions, it will save the average family over $1,000 a year.

While many, if not all, of her 691 words are spectacularly misguided, what's more telling are the words that you won't find in the piece. Those would be "wind," "solar," "geothermal," "climate change," and "global warming," among others. She does include the word "clean," but only insofar it relates to fossil fuels. Good thing Alaska isn't already feeling the effects of global warming and doesn't stand to be impacted more by rising temperatures, sea levels and other consequences of a changing climate than perhaps any other state.

Most curious of all, Palin's strident attacks on a plan to slash carbon pollution come after her emphatic, if newly discovered, support for such a plan during the 2008 campaign. Watch her here in the Vice-Presidential Debate:

(Palin's partner on the GOP ticket and longtime advocate of action on global warming, Senator John McCain, also seems to have largely abandoned his support for such measures in the name of partisan political opposition to the President's agenda.)

In cementing her relationship as Big Oil's bestie, it looks like Palin may have stumbled on the perfect recipe for Baked Alaska.

UPDATE: I now see that Ben Carmichael has a post from yesterday with more or less the same title. I guess great minds think alike (or go for the most obvious title anyway.)

Follow Josh Dorner on Twitter: www.twitter.com/joshydo

Comments

[0emissions]

When will America wake up and do the math on how many Trillions they collectively spend on just maintaining their automobiles and the enormous social costs as a result of this use.
Its exhausting!
Nuclear sounds like a nightmare while wind, solar and geothermal are practical and nonthreatening .

[mychagal]

".her courageous decision to abandon her position." This is one of the funniest sentences I've read thus far.

[RomeoMD25]

Exxon Mobile Funded latest climate bill(interesting)

Industries and individual companies with a stake in the landmark House climate and energy bill poured money into lobbying early this year

Exxon Mobil Corp. spent the most within that group, paying $9.3 million on lobbying the first quarter of this year.
Last year the company spent $29 million, its highest level ever.

Carbon and CO2 (carbon dioxide) are fundamental for all life on Earth. CO2 is a colorless, odorless, non-toxic gas.

The world's best meteorologists using the most advanced computers cannot predict local weather two weeks in the future.
So how can global warming proponents predict the entire world's climate 50 or 100 years in the future?

The answer is that they can't.

[drhunt]

Mr. Dorner-perhaps a refresher course on the difference between "capping carbon emissions" and 'cap and trade" are. I see nothing in your article or the 5 sec blurb during the debate that would indicate palin agreeing on cap and trade, certainly not like the Obama team has set forth. When McCain came back from his campaign hiatus and announced how he would deal with the economic crisis many of you laughed at his ideas, and skewered him. He stated that he would put a cap on the federal budget, but build 20 nuclear power plants. I can safely state that if he had been elected, and he had done as he stated he would, we would NOT be at 4 times the federal deficit, nor would we be at 9.5% unemployment and rising. Do you have ANY clue how many people would be needed to build 20 plants? Heavy machinery/­constructi­on workers, cement workers, rebar and cement suppliers, welders and LOTS of electricians and engineers. Plus, the money into the local economies would be prodigious. Cap federal spending, employ hundreds of thousands of workers, with the trickle down effect into local economies saving jobs there. Plus, at the end of the 7-10 years that it takes to get nuclear power online, you have safe, efficient and relatively clean sources of power. Natural gas and oil from the North Slope, clean, efficient power here in the lower 48. Hmmm...sou­nds good to me.

[drhunt]

Cap and trade is merely political payback to Goldman Sachs and GE's Immelt. They're the two entities that Obama has not yet paid back for their support during the campaign. The unions, ACORN and soros have been paid back...now it's GS and GE's turn.