Alaska Governor Sarah Palin penned an op-ed in Tuesday’s Washington Post slamming Obama’s “cap-and-tax” plan and promoting America’s home-grown, (not) cheap, (not) clean, (not) abundant fossil fuel supply.
Palin clearly wants to be relevant in her forthcoming post-resignation days, and what better way than by declaring herself the lead spokesperson attacking efforts to stop climate change?
In true GOP fashion, Palin seeks to put the fear of God and all things scary into readers minds, foretelling an apocalyptic future for any who subscribe to the idea that we need to curb carbon emissions to save the climate and protect our economy from carbon dependence.
Palin declares Obama’s cap-and-trade (er, sorry, she says “cap-and-tax” four times) energy plan an “enormous threat to our economy” that “would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.”
Permanent damage? You mean the tipping point beyond which scientists conclude that we won’t be able to recover the climate and will surely face more devastating floods, droughts, and heat waves?
No, no. That’s not the “permanent damage” Sarah Palin predicts.
Instead, Palin is talking about the damage that efforts to curb carbon emissions might have on the profits of the world’s largest polluters, including the oil industry which has treated her and her family so well over the years, providing gobs of campaign funding and a job for dear husband Todd (when he’s not out snowmobiling, of course).
Palin argues that, by pursuing renewable energy technologies and cutting carbon emissions, the U.S. would be “making energy scarcer and more expensive!” That’s her exclamation mark – it must really be true if you add that kind of emphatic “!” to it.
Anyway, any efforts to solve the climate crisis, in Palin’s mind, would have the effect of “destroying America’s economy.”
What the U.S. really (“!”) needs is to “tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil.”
That’s right. According to Sarah Palin, God put coal, natural gas and oil down there (and don’t fail to notice that most of it lies under Red states, you liberals! He’s on the GOP’s side!)
Obama’s plan will “kill” and “clobber every American consumer” goshdarnit (“!”)
The reality is, apparently, not visible through Sarah Palin’s rose-colored glasses.
Media Matters for America picks apart the many misleading lies in Palin’s op-ed, as does Climate Progress, which points out that Palin received the Post’s not-so-prestigious Four Pinocchios award for continuing “to peddle bogus [energy] statistics” during her failed ’08 campaign for VP, yet the Post apparently has no problem running this screed without fact checking it.
Get Energy Smart! Now!!! (emphasis not Palin’s) also weighs in on the op-ed by “Sarah ‘Energy Expert’ Palin: Ready to lead American away from science and back into the past.”
Bravo, Governor Palin. Please, please keep it up.
