To Sarah Palin: polar bears need your support

marjorie says...

Sarah Palin won't come right out and say that climate change results from human activities. She says that we don't need to know the reasons--we just need to fix it. She then goes on to focus on man-made activities in her solutions. Palin has sued the federal government to stop the listing of the polar bear by the feds as endangered. This campaign puts her in a pickle. She doesn't want to admit that climate change is man-made, even when she knows it. She thinks to do so would limit the places in which Alaska can drill for oil and natural gas, which is where it's bread is buttered. And as governor of Alaska, she can spout her science-defying statements (just follow that link above), but as VP candidate she has to try, at least, to get real.


IFILL: Governor, I'm happy to talk to you in this next section
about energy issues. 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.