Next Generation Energy

And not just because she a super-shill for Big Oil who said in July, "I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can't drill our way out of our problem." That absurd claim makes of her not even an oil expert, but an oil super-shill. I guess she has missed all those ads from billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens, who keeps saying, "I've been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of" (see also "The cruel offshore-drilling hoax" and "Offshore drilling raises oil prices*")

Even super-shill may be putting it mildly. Palin has said that new multibillion-dollar fossil fuel infrastructure in Alaska is "God's Will." She has said:

I can do my part in doing things like working really, really hard to get a natural gas pipeline -- about a $30 billion project that's going to create a lot of jobs for Alaskans and will have a lot of energy flowing through here -- and pray about that also. I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.

If God listens to prayers for building oil infrastructure, it is safe to say I'm in the wrong religion. I guess we can add theologian to her growing list of areas of expertise. But, of course, renewable energy is not on the list:

Alternative-energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop.

Uhh, no. Even Pickens thinks we can get 20% of our electricity from wind power alone in 10 years. Renewables -- and efficiency -- are ready now, unlike new coastal drilling resources (see "Efficiency, Part 3: The only cheap power left" and "Why we never need to build another polluting power plant" and "Is 450 ppm possible? Part 5: Old coal's out, can't wait for new nukes, so what do we do NOW?").

Worse than her warped views on energy is that she is global warming denier. That makes McCain/Palin simply unelectable.

1. McCain has a significant chance of dying in office.

2. Palin is a global warming denier.

3. If the the next president doesn't provide very strong climate leadership at home and abroad then we have doomed our children and countless generations after them to ever worsening suffering and misery.

In short, we now know with high scientific certainty it is simply immoral to elect a president or vice president who doesn't understand the urgent need for very strong domestic action and international leadership to mitigate man-made climate change. All those who care about the health and well-being of future generations must become single issue voters on climate.

The mere fact that McCain chose Palin makes clear he does not consider global warming a priority issue, otherwise he would never have risked putting a global warming denier a heartbeat away from the presidency. We must not ratify his dangerously flawed judgment. Note also the sharp contrast between McCain's judgment in picking Palin and Obama's in picking Biden (see "Why Biden is Such an Important Pick for the Climate").

Let's go through the three points:

1. Politico has published the actuarial analysis at "McCain and the politics of mortality":

According to these statistics, there is a roughly 1 in 3 chance that a 72-year-old man will not reach the age of 80, which is how old McCain would be at the end of a second presidential term. And that doesn't factor in individual medical history, such as McCain's battles with potentially lethal skin cancer....

... for a man who has lived 72 years and 67 days (McCain's age on Election Day this year), there is between a 14.2 and 15.1 percent chance of dying before Inauguration Day 2013

In short, there is a substantial chance that Palin could end up president.

2. Newsmax has Palin's views on warming:

Q: What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?

A: A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.

This makes Palin a typical conservative. A recent poll revealed that only 27% of Republicans believe the earth is warming because of human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels (see "The deniers are winning, especially with the GOP"). Needless to say, if humans aren't the cause of global warming, then it's a random cycle that will eventually reverse itself, so you'd be crazy to mandate sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions like McCain (says he) wants.

Despite all the conservative blather about family values, if you are global warming denier, then you simply don't care about the nation's or the world's children.

3. "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment," warned IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri last fall when the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its major multi-year report synthesizing our understanding of climate science. And remember that Pachauri was handpicked by the Bush administration to replace the "alarmist" Bob Watson. It's the facts that make scientists alarmists, not their politics.

Only a president who understands that humans are the cause of global warming can provide the aggressive leadership needed to achieve deep greenhouse gas emissions cuts in this country -- and convince the rest of the planet, including countries like China, India, and Russia, to join us. Only genuine presidential leadership on climate can avert centuries of misery, including many tens of feet of sea level rise, loss of fresh water supplies to a billion people, desertification of one third the planet, and extinction of more than two thirds of all species on land and sea (see "Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 0: The alternative is humanity's self-destruction").

McCain's choice of global warming denier Sarah Palin as his president makes him an unacceptable choice for president.