Gwen Ifill asked a poorly worded two-part question where the two parts barely intersected, but the critical question of how to lower carbon emissions was almost completely ignored by one of the candidates. See if you can tell which one...
from the transcript
IFILL: Let me clear something up, Sen. McCain has said he supports caps on carbon emissions. Sen. Obama has said he supports clean coal technology, which I don't believe you've always supported.
BIDEN: I have always supported it. That's a fact.
IFILL: Well, clear it up for us, both of you, and start with Gov. Palin.
PALIN: Yes, Sen. McCain does support this. The chant is "drill, baby, drill." And that's what we hear all across this country in our rallies because people are so hungry for those domestic sources of energy to be tapped into.
They know that even in my own energy-producing state we have billions of barrels of oil and hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of clean, green natural gas. And we're building a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline which is North America's largest and most you expensive infrastructure project ever to flow those sources of energy into hungry markets.
Barack Obama and Sen. Biden, you've said no to everything in trying to find a domestic solution to the energy crisis that we're in. You even called drilling -- safe, environmentally-friendly drilling offshore as raping the outer continental shelf.
There -- with new technology, with tiny footprints even on land, it is safe to drill and we need to do more of that. But also in that "all of the above" approach that Sen. McCain supports, the alternative fuels will be tapped into: the nuclear, the clean coal.
Obviously Palin doesn’t believe in global warming, hence her tone-deafness towards the critical issue of caps and clean coal.
Luckily, this "answer" makes it very clear how the McCain/Palin team views the issue. When asked a question about limiting carbon emissions (with caps and/or "clean coal") she answers that Americans want to use more fossil fuel. At the very end she throws in a few buzz words about "alternative fuels", but the vast majority of her answer is all about increasing carbon emissions, not reducing them.
This is a dangerously stupid position.