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“I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.”

– Sarah Palin, June 8 2008

“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.”

– Sarah Palin, October 2 2008

Sarah Palin, September 29 2008:

You know there are - there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that we’re dealing with now, these impacts. I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate.

Skiing versus surfing — OK, that can be blamed on changes in climate. But not Parcheesi. You can play Parcheesi any time.

While Congress has been busy creating political theater with what increasingly appears to be a manufactured crisis, the Global Carbon Project reminds us what a real crisis looks like. With the project’s facilitation, a group of scientists from the USA, UK, France and Australia came together to estimate the carbon dioxide emissions from 2007.

Their results have just been released, and they reveal that emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and the production of cement have increased far beyond what the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change thought possible. The GCP report states,

“The actual emissions growth rate for 2000-2007 exceeded the highest forecast growth rates for the decade 2000-2010 in the emissions scenarios of the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (IPCC-SRES). This makes current trends in emissions higher than the worst case IPCC-SRES scenario.”

That 700 billion dollars headed to Wall Street would be better spent creating a sustainable, clean energy infrastructure manufactured right here in the USA. That effort would create huge numbers of jobs, and restore our nation’s manufacturing capabilities - and could help our economy recover from the failures of the marketeers in the big investment firms.

Which team do you think ought to be entrusted with the effort to bring our emissions down? The ticket with the vice presidential candidate who only realized two weeks ago that human beings have anything to do with climate change?

Bristol Bay up in Alaska is a difficult place for offshore drilling for oil to be done. The area is subjected every winter to intense storms with extremely high wind and waves that can be capable of wrecking oil drilling rigs. At the same time, that extreme weather makes it next to impossible for cleanup and recovery crews to deal with the resulting oil spills.

What’s more, Bristol Bay is home to huge numbers of fish that make a major contribution to the supply of seafood. The atmospheric currents that cause the area’s rough weather are matched by oceanic currents that well up nutrients, contributing to a biologically rich marine environment that is economically as well as ecologically a treasure.

So, what kind of idiot would be in favor of offshore drilling for crude oil in Bristol Bay? The Sarah Palin kind of idiot, naturally. In 2007, Sarah Palin supported George W. Bush’s decision to reopen Bristol Bay to offshore drilling. The bay was closed to offshore drilling after the infamous Exxon Valdez wreck. Sarah Palin is apparently eager to forget the lessons of that disaster.

The Bush-Palin decision to drill baby drill in Bristol Bay was so monumentally stupid that even honest Republicans opposed it. Republicans for Environmental Protection said that the Bush-Palin move “defies logic”. The group pointed out that drilling all the crude oil under Bristol Bay would only provide the amount of oil that the USA burns in ten days. They called the idea of drilling for oil in Bristol Bay “folly” that should make Americans “very nervous”.

Putting one of the nation’s richest fisheries at risk for just 10 days of oil - that’s the Sarah Palin idea of energy policy.

Sadly, now that Sarah Palin is the vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party, Republicans for Environmental Protection has gone silent about the insane energy policy Palin has promoted as Governor of Alaska. Before, the group said that Sarah Palin’s approach to energy “defies logic”. Now, the group is closing its eyes, putting its hands over its big elephant ears, and just pretending that there isn’t any problem.

How very Republican of them.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the Arctic ice has melted to its greatest extent and, as winter creeps in, is beginning to refreeze. As the following graph from the NSIDC shows, the extent of Arctic ice this year is far below the average for years past, and the amount of open water in the Arctic this year is only surpassed by that in 2007 for recorded history:

The Center for Biological Diversity makes it official: Sarah Palin has declared the Rubber Dodo of 2008. From the announcement:

Palin has waged a deceptive public relations campaign, asserting that the polar bear is increasing. But many populations (including Alaska’s southern Beaufort Sea) are in decline and two-thirds (including all Alaska bears) are projected to disappear by 2050 by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Palin has repeatedly asserted that Alaska Department of Fish and Game scientists found fatal flaws in the sea ice models used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to determine the polar bear is threatened. When challenged, Palin refused to release the alleged state review. Independent scientists eventually obtained a summary through the federal Freedom of Information Act, revealing that Palin had lied: The state mammalogists concurred with the Fish and Wildlife Service determination that Arctic sea ice is melting at an extraordinary rate and threatens the polar bear with extinction.

Another liar, another science denier running for the White House? Haven’t we learned our lesson, eight years over? In a month and a half, we’ll find out.

Some might feel unconcerned at the recent research suggesting that global warming will lead to increased hurricane intensity in the years to come. “After all,” they might think, “I don’t live on the Gulf Coast or anywhere near the Atlantic, so what’s the problem?”

Well, I don’t live in those places either. I live in central Ohio, for Pete’s sake. Nonetheless we got hit by the winds of Hurricane Ike yesterday, and they’re telling us that we will be out of power for 4 days. The impact of climate will reach far.

Thank you, Sarah Palin, for finally admitting that people’s activities have a role in causing global warming. I appreciate your willingness to at long last face reality. But how brittle of you to try to deny that you ever said people had nothing to do with it:

Show me where I have ever said that there’s absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any effect or no effect on climate change. I have not said that.

Of course Sarah Palin said people had nothing to do with global warming. And she said so quite recently, as Juliet Elperin points out:

I’m not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity.

A changing climate 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.

What’s she going to tell America next? That she would never, ever, ever wear glasses?

“My friends, we spent $3 million of your money to study the DNA of bears in Montana! Now, I don’t know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue, but the point is it was 3 million of your money. It was your money. And you know, we laugh about it, but we cry — and we should cry” — John McCain, August 16, 2008

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s earmark request this year for money to study the DNA of sea lions: $3.2 million. Requested from the Federal government: $3.16 million. From the Alaska state government: $40 thousand.

Oooh. That’ll leave a mark.

And hey — did you know that John McCain actually voted for the DNA research on bears? Do you think he forgot?

Memries may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So its the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were,
The way we werrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre…

[Tip o’ the pen to TPM Muckraker]

When I wrote yesterday that Sarah Palin had authorized the dumping of unprecedented amounts of toxic waste into Cook Inlet, Alaska, I imagined it was bad, but I had no idea how bad. It turns out that the amount of toxic waste that Sarah Palin agreed to allow oil company Chevron to dump into Cook Inlet is in the billions of gallons. Billions.

Rob Ernst, a forward-looking commercial fisherman who has lived on Cook Inlet for his entire life, points out that Sarah Palin’s excuses for allowing the dumping of toxic waste into the water don’t hold, well, water. Sarah Palin says that the economy of the Cook Inlet area will die if Chevron can’t dump billions of gallons of toxic waste into the waterway. Ernst points out that the Cook Inlet economy will die if Chevron does not stop dumping billions of gallons of toxic wastes there. “These toxic pollutants taint our efforts to brand and market Cook Inlet salmon as clean, healthy and wholesome — an essential component in our fight for market share against a glut of farmed fish on world markets,” he writes.

After what I’ve learned about what Chevron has been doing to the waters of the Cook Inlet under Sarah Palin’s approving watch, I certainly wouldn’t eat Cook Inlet salmon. The toxic wastes that Chevron has been dumping into the Cook Inlet are byproducts of its oil drilling operations: Poisonous heavy metals like arsenic, lead and cadmium, as well as the crudest dregs of crude oil production - the stuff that isn’t even fit to burn or pump into asphalt. That is what Chevron has been dumping in the billions of gallons, with Sarah Palin’s permission, into the Cook Inlet.

It was last year, 2007, that Chevron applied to the EPA to get a special waiver to break violate the Clean Water Act, and triple the amount of toxic wastes it would dump into the Cook Inlet. In order for that petition for a special waiver to succeed, Chevron needed the approval of the Governor of Alaska. Sarah Palin could have said no. She could have stopped the massive pollution of commercial fishing waters in Alaska. Sarah Palin didn’t do that. She decided to give Big Oil exactly what it wanted.

This morning, one of our right wing readers, a supporter of Sarah Palin, tried to justify this atrocious betrayal of the public trust. The reader tried to pit the needs of humans against the needs of the endangered beluga whales of the Cook Inlet - whales that Sarah Palin has argued should be left to deal with the toxic wastes from Chevron all on their own. “What’s more important…Human life or a beluga whale?” the reader wrote.

It’s a question based upon a false presumption - the presumption that what’s good for wildlife is bad for human beings. Actually, human beings are in as much danger from Sarah Palin’s program to fill the Cook Inlet with poisons as the whales are.

Cadmium, arsenic and lead aren’t just poisonous to belugas. They’re also poisonous to human beings. Human beings are being sold fish and shellfish caught in the Cook Inlet to eat as seafood. Studies have found that Cook Inlet fish and shellfish contain dangerous levels of these heavy metals.

Chevron’s toxic waste dumping is turning delicious seafood into a deadly treat. Commercial fishing from the Cook Inlet is now bringing poison to Americans’ dinner tables, thanks to Chevron and Sarah Palin.

Chevron, instead of dealing with the problem, is trying to cover it up. Chevron has actually tried to prevent further research about the health effects of pollution in the Cook Inlet from taking place. Sarah Palin has not raised a single protest about those efforts.

The tragedy of it all is that there is technology referred to as reinjection that could greatly reduce the amount of toxic waste that enters Cook Inlet waters, while not reducing Chevron’s production capacity at all. Chevron refuses to consider reinjection, however, preferring to dump toxic waste in the old, sloppy ways developed generations ago.

The billions of gallons of toxic waste being dumped into Cook Inlet are unnecessary, and they’re harming the economic interests and the health of the Alaskans that Sarah Palin has sworn to serve. If Sarah Palin gets elected Vice President, and becomes President after the likely death of John McCain, all America may suffer her cruel indifference in the way that the people and animals of the Cook Inlet have suffered.

A Palin Poison Podcast

Ralph Nader, independent candidate for President in 2008, came to the Drexel movie theater just outisde downtown Columbus, Ohio on September 8, 2008 to make his case for the presidency. Nader’s primary complaint: corporate control of the American economy and its corrosive effect upon politics. His political platform: to reinvest in public works and infrastructure and to bring a full array of social benefits and protections to the American citizen. Nader’s strategic demand: to be allowed to participate in the fall 2008 presidential debates and make his case.

The following is my videorecording of Nader’s remarks. A transcript follows below.

Thank you very much. Today’s news about the government bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is just the latest installment in the excessive greed and concentrated power of giant corporations that are destabilizing our economy, discharging hundreds of thousands of workers, and then running to Washington to be bailed out by the American taxpayer. I think there needs to be a taxpayer revolt in this country that’s very organized and that says to giant corporations, “If you believe you’re capitalists, then you succeed and fail on your own two feet, and don’t engage in mismanagement, corruption, or excessive speculation where you run to Washington and we, the taxpayers, have to bail you out.”

This is not capitalism. This is corporate socialism. The bailouts by Washington of the Wall Street crooks some weeks ago, the contemporary bailout of the two largest financial corporations in America, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the forthcoming bailout in the next few days of the totally mismanaged auto companies in Michigan illustrate that there is a massive transfer of risk from these mismanaged and casino-type corporations onto the backs of taxpayers today, and our children and grandchildren as taxpayers tomorrow.

The presidential campaign of Nader-Gonzalez is going to make this an upfront issue. The two major candidates are going along like toadies issuing one-paragraph press releases rubberstamping one federal bailout after another of these giant mismanaged corporations whose CEOs, when they do finally depart, depart on a floating ocean of tens of millions of dollars of personal compensation. This is a disrespect and a disregard and a ravaging of hard-pressed American taxpayers who should not have to bail out corporate giants.

Our campaign also wants to bring the social benefits up to the level of Western Europe has had for 40-55 years, namely: full medical care for everybody, free choice of doctor and hospital and private delivery of health care. Second, a living wage restoring the wages of minimum wage workers to the level, adjusted for inflation, of what it was in 1968. That would make it $10/hour today. Instead, the recent increase in the federal minimum wage in July took it to a measly $6.55 an hour.

Third, a major crackdown to either prevent or prosecute corporate crime, fraud and abuse. The mass media has reported again and again the corporate crime wave, the ripoff of consumers, the stealing from investors, the depletion of pension funds, from Enron to Wall Street. Yet nothing is done about it in Washington other than the two parties dialing for the same corporate dollars from the same corporate crooks. We want a law and order campaign against these corporate capitalists where they are expected to obey common rules of decency and not exploit their workers and the consumers and then be bailed out by the taxpayers when their greed becomes too extreme.

We want a six month negotiated withdrawal of all U.S. military and corporate forces from Iraq with UN-sponsored elections and interim continued humanitarian aid for the Iraqis whose countries we have so significantly destroyed.

We also want the U.S. government to reverse course and instead of supporting the militaristic approach to dominating, brutalizing, occupying and colonizing the Palestinian people in their remaining territories, instead the U.S. government should support the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements which, years ago, worked out a two state solution between themselves. You can’t settle that conflict if the U.S. government, U.S. taxpayers, are supporting unquestionably the hard liners in the Israeli government. We have to support a majority of the Israeli people and the Palestinian people who in polls have shown they are willing to settle this conflict for a two-state solution, namely a return to the 1967 borders.

We also support a massive solar energy conversion in this country and massive energy efficiency standards upgrades for motor vehicles, appliances, heating, lighting and other energy systems. In this way, we will accelerate the replacement of fossil fuels and nuclear power, help save the environment locally and globally, encourage more small businesses to work in the solar energy area, and establish energy independence, which will reduce the likelihood of future geopolitical conflicts.

And finally — you can get more detail on our agenda on votenader.org — but finally, finally, we want to open up the presidential debates. What are we doing in this country rationing debates? We don’t ration weather forecasts. We don’t ration entertainment. We don’t ration sports. The Debate Commission is nothing more than a private corporation created and controlled 21 years ago by the Republican and Democratic parties to get rid of the League of Women Voters sponsorship, which they thought was too independent.

What we need are companies like Google and Yahoo and a coalition of veteran, labor, neighborhood, consumer and environmental groups to sponsor their own debates. Sponsor them in ways that represent millions of people’s interest in diverse voices on that debate stage, and sponsor them in a way that the two major party candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, cannot say no. And if they do on national television their two chairs will be on the stage with their names on it, empty.

I say this because it’s very very easy to do this. In any of the major swing states, like Ohio or Michigan or Pennsylvania, everybody knows that John McCain and Barack Obama are going to come to these states at least three to five times between now and November 4th. They’re going to come to Columbus, they’re going to come to Cleveland, they’re going to come to Cincinnati. If a whole coalition of groups — start with trade unions, neighborhood groups, the Urban League, environmental groups, children’s welfare groups, education groups and veterans groups — all got together on a letterhead and basically said, “We invite you to a major auditorium in our metropolitan area, and we’re going to present you with our agenda, and we want you to react and respond to our agenda,” in that way the people begin taking control of the dynamics of presidential campaigns instead of being left with what they are left with now, to be mere spectators. Thank you.

I lamented the apathy with which the American public has reacted to the plight of the Cook Inlet beluga whale last night.

This morning I will counter that story of apathy with short news about remarkable dedication to activism on a similar cause: Opposition to shark finning. Populations of sharks are crashing all around the world, and part of the problem is that immense numbers of sharks are caught by fishing operations that haul them on board, cut off their fins for use in Asian soups, and then throw their bodies overboard as waste.

In England, Alice Newstead decided to confront this immense waste with a protest worthy of remark. She hung on hooks used to catch sharks in a storefront window in London, the hooks piercing the skin on her back.

The store, LUSH, sells cosmetics, icluding a limited edition bar of soap - shark fin soap. (explanation: it’s not soap made from shark fins. It’s a “cruelty-free” bar of soap with a fake shark fin coming out of the top of the bar of soap) The profits from selling shark fin soap will all go to Sea Shepherd, an organization that confronts illegal fishing and whaling.

Strong action. It’s refreshing to see.

I am disgusted tonight at the apathy of the American people. I enjoyed the video made by J. Clifford earlier today to accompany his article on Sarah Palin’s approval of Chevron’s plan to poison whales in the Cook Inlet of Alaska by dumping toxic waste there.

Sarah Palin supports poisoning whales! For goodness sakes, that’s the kind of story that could really get people’s attention - or so I thought.

I eagerly went to YouTube to see who else had made any videos about the plight of the Cook Inlet belugas, who are endangered, but are being illegally denied a decision under the Endangered Species Act because of the political interference of George W. Bush.

There was not one other video on YouTube about the endangered status of the Cook Inlet belugas. Not a single one. There were six other videos showing the belugas that live in the Cook Inlet, but just to show how pretty they look. Nothing was mentioned about their endangered status.

One other video came up in the search that shows a power plant named Beluga.

That’s all there was.

Doesn’t anybody give a damn? The Republican vice presidential candidate approves of poisoning endangered whales, and all Americans can do is shrug?

If a shrug is all that we can muster in the face of such outrageous abuse of power, then America will get the leadership it deserves this Election Day, and we will all suffer a fate like those of the Cook Inlet beluga as a result.