In The News: VP Debate and the Environment

In the News

One of my major concerns as a geologist is the environment. In regards to that, Governor Palin has come across as not only ignorant but down right backwards on her thinking. I think Biden's comment of "drill, drill, drill" hits the nail right on the head. Personally I think that instead of wasting time and money on more drilling we could spend the same time and money on renewable resources and get the return not only sooner, but then we would be sustainable.

However, the main focus of this rant is on Palin's comment about global warming at the VP debate:

IFILL: ... Let's talk about climate change. What is true and what is false about what we have heard, read, discussed, debated about the causes of climate change?

PALIN: Yes. Well, as the nation's only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it's real.

I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?

We have got to clean up this planet. We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that.

As governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change sub-cabinet to start dealing with the impacts. We've got to reduce emissions. John McCain is right there with an "all of the above" approach to deal with climate change impacts.

We've got to become energy independent for that reason. Also as we rely more and more on other countries that don't care as much about the climate as we do, we're allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for. So even in dealing with climate change, it's all the more reason that we have an "all of the above" approach, tapping into alternative sources of energy and conserving fuel, conserving our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons so that we can clean up this planet and deal with climate change.

How does that even make any sense? If somehow McCain wins, he better not die.