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Jim Motavalli

Going rogue: Sarah Palin's climate tweets and energy-related wisdom

Sarah Palin uses social media to get out her message: Drill, baby, drill, and don't worry about climate change because the planet can take care of itself.

Mon, Jan 04 2010 at 3:12 PM EST
 9

REIGN OF ERROR: Sarah Palin's factoids on energy have come under fire. (Photo: Geelingguy/Flickr)
 
Who do you think tweeted this?
 
“Earth saw clmate chnge4 ions;will cont 2 c chnges.R duty2responsbly devlop resorces4humankind/not pollute&destroy;but cant alter naturl chng”
 
No, Rush Limbaugh’s tweets are more polished, and Glenn Beck’s more apocalyptic. This one was from the Tweet-friendly Sarah Palin, who has more time for twittering now that she’s finished her book and is out of office. Around the time of the Copenhagen climate talks, she also sent out this broadside:
 
“Copenhgen=arrogance of man2think we can change nature’s ways.MUST b good stewards of God’s earth,but arrogant&naive2say man overpwers nature.”
 
In both cases, she seems to be saying we can’t affect the “natural” climate, and shouldn’t even try. There’s a reason she arrived at these positions, and it’s richly detailed by essayist Michael T. Klare in the new attack book Going Rouge, which could be subtitled Palin’s Reign of Error instead of "An American Nightmare." For an online account of mistakes of fact in Going Rogue, visit here.
 
Alaska, her employer until recently, produced 719,000 barrels of oil per day in 2007 — an output on par with Egypt, Oman and Malaysia. About 75 percent of Oman’s export earnings are from oil, which makes an interesting comparison to Alaska (especially if you treat it as a separate country). Some 42 percent of Alaska’s annual revenue comes from oil rents, and if you throw in the state’s bloated federal energy subsidies, oil jumps to 53 percent. Alaska is the only state with such a skewed economy: Even Texas (which still produces more daily oil than Alaska) is much more diversified.
 
Palin became governor of Alaska in 2006 and, as Klare puts it, “devoted herself to a single overarching objective: increasing Alaska’s income from oil and gas.” Specifically, she worked on getting a natural gas pipeline built between Alaska’s North Slope and Canada (and eventually the lower 48 states), and a bigger tax on oil companies operating in the state. During her time in office, she was relentless in trying to increase oil drilling, including in sensitive environmental areas such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
 
And if some polar bears are gored in the process, that’s just a distraction. As she said in a Washington Post op-ed piece, “[W]e have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today … Our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of [ANWR] if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats.”
 
Palin pays lip service to renewable energy, but she argued against subsidizing it at a meeting of the National Governors Association last year, concluding that “the conventional resources we have can fill the gap between now and when new technologies become economically competitive and don’t require subsidies.” No wonder the reality of climate change drives her wild, because it’s an inconvenient truth that supports solar and wind development.
 
But Palin also wants it both ways, and went after ABC-TV anchor Charles Gibson when he asked in a 2008 interview about her views denying global warming. “I think you are a cynic,” she shot back, “because show me where I have ever said that there’s absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect, or no effect, on climate change.”
 
Palin's exchange with Gibson is contained in this report from Democracy Now:
 
 
Note that she said in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, “I’m not a doom-and-gloom environmentalist like Al Gore, blaming the changes in our climate on human activity.” Gore, in turn, called Palin a “climate change denier,” and on the basis of this it would seem an accurate-enough charge.
 

 

Related on MNN:
• Gore vs. Palin on climate change
• Sarah Palin’s ‘Going Rogue’ book loose on energy facts
• Sarah Palin: Eco-fashion model?

 

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Related Topics: Climate Policy, Renewable Energy, Sarah Palin

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anonymous
dennisintn 01/05/2010 14:52 PM

conservatives have been trying to "drill, baby, drill" for 30 year,, the current rate of money being spent on foreign oil is in excess of 7 billion dollars a month. the dems. have led the way towards ignoring our own resources and that has led to the trainwreck that has been our economy for the last 3 yrs. pelosi herself, when asked why she wouldn't lift the ban on domestic drilling, got that vacuous smile and said she was doing it for their own good. the woman is insane, as reid is in the.... More

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bill 01/07/2010 12:35 PM

WTF are you talking about! Bush and the neocons capsized the the economy. Taking it from surplus to deficit. Are you taking drugs or just stupid like Palin? High risk loans and a bloated housing market are among the reasons for a crashing economy and it didnt help that your boy wonder, Bush, pissed billions away on the Iraq war to fill Haliburton,s pockets either. Simpleton!

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Todd 01/05/2010 09:49 AM

Enter your comments here
The 2000 acres figure was devised to try and assuage those in Congress against development. It is an attempt to deceive. A definition for what comprises the 2000 acres was also originally written but never included in legislation at the time. No current legislation includes a definition of what development does or does not factor into the 2000 acres. Do elevated pipeline supports count? Probably not is the realistic answer. The 2000 acres or 3.14 sq miles is non.... More

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anonymous
Rick523 01/05/2010 02:57 AM

Just one little thing - investigations by the state legislature and the AG's office now seem to suggest that the reason Alaska's oil prices are so high for residents is that the refiners have jacked up their profit margins because they can. There's only two refiners (I believe), and 1 of them produces around 80% of the gasoline. It's essentially a monopoly. Now the state is looking into requiring the refiners to return to their pre-jacked up price margins. Traditionally, Alaska's refiners.... More

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anonymous
Glen 01/04/2010 19:10 PM

President O, the environmentalist in chief, has set a goal for the US to be relying on renewable energy for 25% of its usage by 2050. Palin turned that on its head by setting the goal for Alaska to be 50% renewable by 2025. In fact AK is already 25% renewable. She is the highest political achiever in renewable energy.

But she also knows that the solution to the problem of dependence on foreign oil is to tap the domestic non-renewable energy. To believe anything else is head in the sand.... More

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anonymous
caribousteaks 01/04/2010 15:25 PM

I think wind and solar will not play a major roll in our energy supply anytime in the next 100 years. We have been talking about them and developing them and spending money on both for over 50 years and yet they haven't gotten anywhere. Neither can handle base load power and both are naturally unreliable. I think environmentalists who dream wind and solar now will die still dreaming wind and solar for the next 100 years.
I also think man and the environment can live in harmony despite.... More

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anonymous
NJ-BJ 01/04/2010 17:31 PM

An oil company executive traveling from Trinidad to Houston informed me that the German government has purchased the entire yearly output of the largest solar panel manufacturer for their country. Their goal is to have 25% of their energy produced by renewable sources. I think your view is true only if we are foolish to let the rest of the developed world steal a march on us.

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anonymous
Steve863 01/05/2010 12:15 PM

That is because Germany has little to no oil. Why do you think there was fighting in North Africa in World War II? Hitler was going after the oil. Germany has no choice but to look for alternatives. We do have a choice, but environmentalist utopians are blind to the most practical solution. Drill baby drill into our massive reserves whiles developing new alternatives. It's the economy, stupid! Our economy needs it.

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anonymous
lefty 01/07/2010 12:16 PM

Its big oil bucks stupid that are blocking renewable energy and people stupid enough to believe their lies. With idiots like you obstructing efforts in renewable energy there will not be any development of new alternatives. That is pure speculation and subject to debate in another forum that we have massive reserves, anyway. You are the one who comes off sounding stupid.

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