This will be brief, but the Washington Post's edition for tomorrow has turned over Op-Ed space to one of the nation's leading experts on science, technology, and global climate change for an in-depth critique of the so called "cap and trade" system of carbon emissions controls.
Who is this expert you ask? Could it be one of the 900 scientists who have all signed statements urging concerted world action before global temperatures rise beyond our control? Could it be Nobel Prize winner Al Gore whose crusading efforts to make the public aware of climate change won him international honors?
No, the WaPo chose as its expert a woman who just quit her job mid-way through her first full term in office, a woman from a state which gets more federal subsidies per capita than any other, a woman so well versed in public policy that she cannot name a single magazine or newspaper she reads regularly. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the author of this Op-Ed is none other than Sarah Palin
Good lord in heaven! What is left of the Post's integrity? Where is its journalistic standards? What can Sarah Palin possibly tell us that will help us better understand how best to extricate ourselves from the risks of climate change? What is her solution?
Just let us drill in ANWR!
In Alaska, we are progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history. Our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats.
Sarah's also an economist and expert in the laws of supply and demand:
American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president's cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.
Uh, may I call you the Resignator? You may not have noticed, but the supplies of energy in the last two or three years haven't been real abundant and they REALLY haven't been real affordable. What's more, there isn't an energy expert anywhere who argues that opening the Arctic Wildlife Reserve to full-tilt pumping would generate more than a blip in world petroleum supplies.
Have you heard nothing Madame "I'm Outta Here"? We need to get OFF the petroleum "teat". We need alternate energies and we need to preserve petroleum for other vital uses, not to mention stop burning it in such massive quantities that we destroy ourselves in the process.
What is simply mind boggling here is what the Washington Post is steadily doing to itself and its journalistic integrity. Next thing you know, they'll be sending out a flier promoting a salon dinner featuring the Resigned Governor Alaska, James Inhofe, Charles Krauthammer, and the guy from EPA who claims his cut-and-paste grade school paper on global warming was unfairly overlooked by real scientists and then inviting their reporters in to get educated - no holds barred.
This is disgusting...The Post has opened its Op-Ed page for another airing of the GOP talking points opponents of cap and trade and global warming legislation have been using ever since the last election campaign....the one they lost by a large margin.
Dear WaPo.....there are a LOT of real experts on these issues out there. The soon to be prematurely departed and demonstratably uninformed governor of a state whose entire existence rests heavily on rapid depletion of its energy reserves, is hardly someone you should be showcasing to boost your own editorial integrity.
What a total and complete embarrassment this paper has become in so short a time. It is hard to believe it once held a spot as a symbol of what real investigative journalism was all about.