During the 2008 campaign, the Washington Post itself gave Sarah Palin its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of "Four Pinocchios" for continuing to "to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers."  That didn’t stop the Post from running a 2009 piece by her filled with bogus information attacking climate action and clean energy action, which Senators Boxer and Kerry later debunked: "The governor's new refrain against global warming action reminds us of every naysayer who has spoken out against progress in cleaning up pollution."  Still Newt Gingrich said she was a conservative leader on energy issues.

So now Palin's book Going Rogue is out -- hmm, the subtitle of the original Freakonomics is A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything -- and Media Matters has two debunkings of it that I'll repost below.  First, MM’s "ongoing list of falsehoods in Palin’s memoir":

Palin: Obama "admitted" cap-and-trade will cause "electricity bills to 'skyrocket' " and "those hit hardest will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet." Palin falsely suggests that "those hit hardest [by cap-and-trade] will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet" and that Obama "has already admitted that the policy he seeks will cause our electricity bills to 'skyrocket.' " She added: "So much for the campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. This is a tax on everyone." [Going Rogue, pgs. 390-391]

CBO says poorest quintile will benefit from Waxman-Markey. The Congressional Budget Office found that in 2020, the version of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill that passed the House in June with the support of the Obama administration would result in a $125 average annual benefit to the quintile of households with the lowest income and a $160 average annual cost to all American households.

Obama was talking about a different plan causing energy costs to "skyrocket." As the Associated Press noted in fact-checking Palin’s book, Obama was not talking about the cap-and-trade legislation that has since passed in the House when he referred to energy costs "necessarily skyrocket[ting]." When Obama made that statement to the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board in January 2008, he was describing a cap-and-trade proposal that would auction off 100 percent of available carbon allowances, and he made no mention at the time of a plan to compensate consumers for potential cost increases. But as PolitiFact.com noted, the Waxman-Markey bill initially would distribute most of the carbon allocations for free and contains substantial provisions to offset costs to consumers, and thus "should reduce costs to consumers."

Palin: "One-size-fits-all codes" required to get funds "simply wouldn’t work." Palin claims that she vetoed a $25 million "earmark for energy conservation" available through the stimulus because Alaska would have needed to adopt "universal energy building codes" to be eligible for the funds. She comments: "Universal building codes -- in Alaska! A practical, libertarian haven full of independent Americans who did not desire 'help' from government busybodies. A state full of hardy pioneers who did not like taking orders from the feds telling us to change our laws. A state so geographically diverse that one-size-fits-all codes simply wouldn’t work." [Going Rogue, pgs. 361-362]

PolitiFact: Palin’s claim that funds were "tied to universal energy building codes" is "false." After Palin made similar comments on Fox News’ Hannity, PolitiFact said she was "wrong" because "municipalities are not forced to accept the specific standards and, given that local governments set their own codes, the feds would be satisfied if Alaska merely promoted such building codes [emphasis in original]." PolitiFact also reported that in a letter to Palin’s chief of staff, a Department of Energy official "wrote that the provision 'provides flexibility with regard to building codes' and 'expressly includes standards other than those cited so long as the standards achieve equivalent energy savings.' "

And here is from MM’s Fact Check on Clean Energy Legislation:

In her upcoming book Going Rogue: An American Life, Sarah Palin made a slew of false charges concerning clean energy legislation.  Contrary to Palin’s tired claims, legislation increasing our investment in clean energy technologies would create jobs in every state and help America become more energy independent, all for less than a quarter a day.

Palin:

One such cure: Washington's misguided "Cap-and-Trade" plan. But let’s call it what it is: a "Cap-and-Tax" program.  The environmentalists' plan to reduce pollution is to tax businesses according to how much pollution they produce. Industries that emit more pollutants would have to pay more in taxes. Businesses that reduce emissions and thereby avoid all or part of the cap-and-tax hits could trade or sell their government credits to other companies.

There are big problems with this. We have the highest unemployment rate in 25 years, and it’s still rising. American jobs in every industry will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under cap-and-trade. The cost of farming, for example, will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing, and transportation will also rise.  We’ll all feel the effects of this misguided plan to buy and sell pollution.

The President has already admitted that the policy he seeks will cause our electricity bills to "skyrocket." Sadly, those hit hardest will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet. So much for the campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. This is a tax on everyone.

Is that what the president meant by "change"?

As more and more Americans understand that cap-and-trade is an environmentalist Ponzi scheme in which only the government benefits, they will refuse to tolerate it. They will make their voices heard at the ballot box, and any lawmaker who supports destructive legislation like this will soon be turned out of office. That’s what we mean by "change"! [Sarah Palin, Going Rogue: An American Life pgs. 390-391]

As Media Matters Action Network has noted, a recent study from UC Berkeley found that pollution reduction and energy efficiency measures would create up to 1.9 million jobs, boost GDP by up to $111 billion and increase families’ incomes by nearly $1,200 per year!

Investment in clean energy technology will create over 1.7 million American jobs. According to the Center for American Progress: "Investments in a clean-energy economy will generate major employment benefits for the entire U.S. economy. Our research finds that spending $150 billion on clean-energy investments would create roughly 1.7 million jobs. This is even after assuming a reduction in fossil fuel spending equivalent to the increase in clean-energy investments." [Center for American Progress, The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy, 6/17/09]

Investment in clean energy technology creates FOUR TIMES as many jobs as an investment in oil and gas. According to the Center for American Progress, "spending $1 million on energy efficiency and renewable energy produces a much larger expansion of employment than spending the same amount on fossil fuels or nuclear energy. Among fossil fuels, job creation in coal is about 32 percent greater than that for oil and natural gas. The employment creation for energy efficiency-retrofitting and mass transit is 2.5 times to 4 times larger than that for oil and natural gas. With renewable energy, the job creation ranges between 2.5 times to 3 times more than that for oil and gas." [Center for American Progress, The Economic Benefits of Investing in Clean Energy, 6/17/09]

Investment in renewable energy has already salvaged many manufacturing facilities closed during economic downturn. Across America, factories and plants abandoned by the old economy have been re-tooled and re-opened to satisfy the growing demand for new energy technologies. For instance, once hopeless manufacturing plants in Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Michigan have re-energized their communities by creating jobs and leading the charge toward a new energy future. [Bloomberg, 4/2/09; Star Tribune, 4/22/09; Grand Rapids Press, 3/6/08]

Reuters: "Climate legislation moving through Congress would have only a modest impact on consumers." According to Reuters: "A new U.S. government study on Tuesday adds to a growing list of experts concluding that climate legislation moving through Congress would have only a modest impact on consumers, adding around $100 to household costs in 2020. Under the climate legislation passed by the House of Representatives in June, electricity, heating oil, and other bills for average families will rise $134 in 2020 and $339 in 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration, the country’s top energy forecaster." [Reuters, 8/5/09]

EIA: Clean energy legislation would cost only $0.23 per day. According to a House Energy and Commerce Committee factsheet of the Energy Information Administration’s analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act: "The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has completed an analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, as passed by the U.S. House of Representatives ... The overall impact on the average household, including the benefit of many of the energy efficiency provisions in the legislation, would be 23 cents per day ($83 per year). This is consistent with analyses by the Congressional Budget Office which projects a cost of 48 cents per day ($175 per year) and the Environmental Protection Agency which projects a cost of 22 to 30 cents per day ($80 to $111 per year)." [House Energy and Commerce Committee, EIA's Economic Analysis Of "The American Clean Energy And Security Act Of 2009," 8/4/09; emphasis original]

CBO: In 2020, cap-and-trade will only cost an average of $175 annually, "About a postage stamp a day." In its analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the Congressional Budget Office wrote: "On that basis, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the net annual economy wide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion -- or about $175 per household." Rep. Edward Markey noted it was "the cost of about a postage stamp a day." [CBO, 6/19/09; House Committee on Energy & Commerce Release, 6/20/09]

Study: Clean energy legislation’s benefits far outweigh costs. According to the Wall Street Journal:

As flawed as it may be, the Waxman-Markey climate bill makes economic sense, offering benefits worth at least twice as much as it costs, if not more.

"From almost any perspective and under almost any assumption, H.R. 2454 is a good investment for the United States to make in our own economic future and in the future of the planet," the paper concludes.

[...]

So, given that the Waxman-Markey bill would curb emissions over the next 40 years, it’s a pretty simple job to tally up the potential benefits: about $1.5 trillion on the middle-of-the-road estimate. The benefits could be as low as $382 billion or as high as $5.2 trillion, depending on how you fiddle with the numbers.

Since Waxman-Markey is meant to cost about $660 billion, that means the bill provides $2.27 in benefits for every dollar spent, the brief concludes. That doesn’t include extra benefits-cleaner air from a cleaned-up power sector, for instance. And it suggests that even tougher greenhouse-gas targets in the Senate version of the bill would make an even more compelling economic argument. [Wall Street Journal, 9/8/09; emphasis added]

By 2025, a clean energy standard would save $95 Billion on energy and gas bills. According to the Center for American Progress: "A national renewable electricity standard, a key piece of the clean energy legislation currently before Congress, would save households and businesses in every state billions of dollars in electricity and natural gas bills … The numbers come from the Union of Concerned Scientists, who earlier this year analyzed a renewable electricity standard that would aim to have 25 percent of our electricity come from renewable sources by 2025. They found that this standard would save families and businesses $95 billion in electricity and natural gas bills through 2030 and spur new investments and hundreds of thousands of new clean-energy jobs." [Center for American Progress, 5/19/09]

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“Many , including us,  find deniers’ claims irresponsible.”

When we last left GOP quitter-in-chief Sarah Palin she had written a falsehood-filled piece attacking climate action and clean energy for, who else, the Washington Post.  Then Senators Boxer and Kerry debunked her piece, pointing out “The governor’s new refrain against global warming action reminds us of every naysayer who has spoken out against progress in cleaning up pollution.”

At the same time, Newt Gingrich called her a conservative leader on energy issues, asserting “Her knowledge of the energy issue is very real.”  In fact, Palin is so ignorant of energy, so practiced at repeating falsehoods, that during last year’s presidential campaign, the Washington Post itself gave her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of “Four Pinocchios” for continuing to “to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers.”

Now Think Progress reports Palin “has signed on with the Washington Speakers Bureau, hoping to cash in on her fame. While Palin did do one speech — to mixed reviews — in Asia recently, she is reportedly having trouble getting booked for more“:

Palin’s bookers are said to be asking for $100,000 per speech, but an industry expert tells Page Six: “The big lecture buyers in the US are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot.”

Many big lecture venues are subscription series, “and they don’t want to tick people off,” said our source. “Palin is polarizing, and some subscribers might cancel if she’s on the lineup.” Other lecture buyers are universities, which have a leftist slant, and corporations, which dislike controversy.

“Palin is so uninteresting to so many groups — unless they are interested in moose hunting,” said our insider. “What does she have to say? She can’t even describe what she reads.“

The real idiots are anyone pays Palin 100k to speak.

A Palin primer:

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“Many , including us,  find deniers’ claims irresponsible.”

The U.S. Postal Service screwed up and delivered a farewell card to us that was clearly intended for Sarah Palin, the now ex-governor of Alaska. We didn’t realize the error before we had opened it, scanned it, and published it here for your reading pleasure. An honest mistake, really… (Click to open.)

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Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and John Kerry, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, write in "What Palin Got Wrong About Energy":

Whether it was the debate over the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Superfund law or any other landmark environmental law, one pattern has always been clear: Time and again, pessimists -- often affiliated with polluting industries -- predicted job losses and great costs to taxpayers. Each time, our environmental laws have cleaned the water we drink, the air we breathe and the communities we live in at far lower cost than initially expected.

Recall that Palin, who quit her governorship Sunday, is so ignorant of energy, so practiced at repeating falsehoods, that in September, during the campaign, the Washington Post itself gave her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of "Four Pinocchios" for continuing "to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers."

But that didn't stop editorial page editor Hiatt from running a piece by Palin filled with bogus information attacking climate action and clean energy action.  And it didn't stop Newt Gingrich from claiming in the clip above, "Her knowledge of the energy issue is very real."

Boxer and Kerry respond to her rhetorical bomb-throwing and lack of knowledge of the issues:

Palin argues that "the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive!" The truth is, clean energy legislation doesn't make energy scarcer or more expensive; it works to find alternative solutions to our costly dependence on foreign oil and provides powerful incentives to pursue cutting-edge clean energy technologies.

Palin asserts that job losses are "certain." Wrong. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and American Clean Energy and Security legislation will create significant employment opportunities across the country in a broad array of sectors linked to the clean energy economy. Studies at the federal level and by states have demonstrated clean energy job creation. A report by the Center for American Progress calculated that $150 billion in clean energy investments would create more than 1.7 million domestic and community-based jobs that can't be shipped overseas.

Palin seems nostalgic for the campaign rally chant of "drill, baby, drill." But she ignores the fact that the United States has only 3 percent of the world's proven oil reserves, while we are responsible for 25 percent of the world's oil consumption.

In fact, the governor's new refrain against global warming action reminds us of every naysayer who has spoken out against progress in cleaning up pollution....

Well, Palin isn't like every other pro-pollution naysayer -- surely she's the only one ever to voluntarily quit the governorship of a state halfway through her term.

Take the acid rain program established in the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990. The naysayers said it would cost consumers billions in higher electricity rates, but electricity rates declined an average of 19 percent from 1990 to 2006. Naysayers said the cost to business would be more than $50 billion a year, but health and other benefits outweighed the costs 40 to 1. Naysayers predicted it would cost the economy millions of jobs. In fact, the United States added 20 million jobs from 1993 to 2000, as the U.S. economy grew 64 percent.

The carefully crafted clean energy bill that we will present to the Senate, building on the Waxman-Markey legislation passed by the House, will jump-start our economy, protect consumers, stop the ravages of unchecked global climate change and ensure that the United States -- not China or India -- will be the leading economic power in this century.

By creating powerful incentives for clean energy, it will create millions of jobs in America -- building wind turbines, installing solar panels on homes and producing a new fleet of electric and hybrid vehicles.

It will also help make America more secure. A May report by retired U.S. generals and admirals found, "Our dependence on foreign oil reduces our international leverage, places our troops in dangerous global regions, funds nations and individuals who wish us harm, and weakens our economy; our dependency and inefficient use of oil also puts our troops at risk."

We do not charge that Palin wants to keep sending hundreds of billions of dollars overseas annually to import oil from countries that, in many cases, are working to harm Americans and American interests around the world -- or that she wants another nation to lead the way to the innovative clean energy solutions that will be eagerly gobbled up by the rest of the world. But those would be the tragic results of the do-nothing policies she has espoused. Our nation's approach to energy must be balanced and must provide incentives for all the available clean energy sources to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Palin has proven she is unfit -- and unwilling -- to govern a single state.

That said, I applaud her taking position of leadership in the climate and clean energy debate -- one always wishes for the lamest of opponents.  So Gingrich's endorsement of her is especially timely.

Here is more from Think Progress on Gingrich's remarks:

At a National Press Club event on Wednesday, a questioner asked Newt Gingrich -- head of a corporate-funded group American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF) -- whether or not he would consider "running with" Sarah Palin in 2012. Gingrich demurred on 2012, but the former House Speaker went on to praise the soon-to-be-former Governor of Alaska as a future conservative leader on energy issues:

GINGRICH:  "Her knowledge of the energy issue is very real. And if you do start to see energy prices go back up I think there will be a pretty big interest in what she has to say about how we can use American energy -- keep the money here in America and the fact that bowing to a Saudi king is not a substitute for energy policy."

Following Palin's July 3rd resignation announcement, Bill Kristol speculated that she was resigning because she had "probably accomplished most of what she was going to get done as governor," which begs the question: what does Palin seek to accomplish in her post-gubernatorial career? Between Gingrich's recent hints, the six mentions of energy in her resignation announcement, and her recent hackneyed op-ed on cap-and-trade in the Washington Post, Republicans may be moving to position Palin as their new leading voice on energy.

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Clean energy opportunities

While I was away on vacation (it was wonderful, thanks for asking), the Washington Post editorial page featured opinion pieces from Sarah Palin and George Will, two of conservatism's leading, um, thinkers, revealing a great deal about the WaPo editorial page and the quality of conservative thinking.

Rebuttal has been ably carried out by many others, including Joe Romm (whose bald pate is belied by his youthful energy!). He demolishes Palin here and Will here.

Rather, a somewhat meta point. The debate over climate/energy legislation, at least as carried out between conservatives and everyone else, has taken on a surreal tinge. One might expect the media to respond, or notice, or react in some way, but outlets like the WaPo just keep carrying on as if the debate is perfectly normal.

The surreality comes from a simple fact: institutionally, as a movement and as a party, conservatives do not believe anthropogenic climate change exists. They don't think the problem the legislation is designed to solve is actually a problem.

You might think this would make for short debates. Conservatives could collectively sign on to a one-line op-ed:

"We do not believe in anthropogenic climate change, thus we do not support legislation to address it."

Period. Done. Right? But that doesn't happen. Instead you get peculiarities like Palin, droning on for 700 words about how the legislation is flawed because it doesn't promote domestic fossil fuel without once mentioning carbon emissions or climate change. You get Will analyzing the challenges of international climate negotiations and then mentioning, almost casually, at the end of his piece, "by the way, climate change isn't real."

But if climate change isn't real, of course we shouldn't be going through the wrenching process of trying to get off fossil fuels in a few short decades. Of course we shouldn't be beating our heads against a wall trying to get China and India to agree to constrain their growth. It's pointless even discussing those things.

If I simply refused to acknowledge the federal deficit, would Fred Hiatt have me on the WaPo editorial page analyzing the merits of deficit reduction proposals? Of course not. I don't believe the $%*# thing exists! Of course I don't support policies to reduce it.

By greenlighting Potemkin arguments about this or that climate policy from the likes of Palin and Will, the WaPo is giving conservatives a pass. Rejection of settled science is treated as a footnote. But without a shared set of facts, there are no rules, no constraints. Republicans can cavalierly demagogue anything Democrats offer, because hell, it's all just funny talk, a game of make believe.

There will never be a policy proposal sensible enough to gain support from people who do not acknowledge the problem the proposal is meant to address. You'd think that fact would merit notice!

So here's my modest proposal for Fred Hiatt and his ilk: Any conservative who writes about climate/energy legislation should be required to begin by stating clearly whether he or she believes the scientific consensus on warming. That fundamental fact colors everything else, so put it up front.

If they do not accept the science, then fine, let them tell us their preferred carbon-insensitive energy policy. Their fellow non-believers can debate the merits.

If they do accept the science, they can't simply reject the moderate (and inadequate) Democratic proposals for addressing the problem contained in ACES. They have to tell us how they would solve the problem. That's the benchmark.

That simple proposal won't make the climate debate sensible -- let's be realistic about our ambitions -- but it would move beyond the pretense that people like Palin and Will are involved in a good-faith debate.

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Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

It was a surprise when Sarah Palin announced that she would step down as Governor of Alaska. But it isn't so surprising that America's biggest quitter doesn't think Americans are up to the challenge of creating a clean energy economy supported by new industries, businesses and jobs.

In her first act as "What the...??"-in-Chief, Palin announced her intention to campaign against clean energy, saying in a guest editorial in yesterday's Washington Post: "what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be [is] President Obama's cap and trade energy plan."

Wow. If that's what's foremost on the mind of a Governor that just quit her job...I guess I'm back to being surprised.

Palin reviews all the reasons she is against the clean energy agenda. You've heard this recipe before. Start with three cups of well-kneaded numbers from the Heritage Foundation; add five or six hefty talking points from any brand of ExxonMobil front-group; slowly stir in 2 cups of tears from dirty energy executives lamenting the oncoming age of clean energy. Bring to a slow boil, stirring constantly.

How did she come up with this recipe? Well, Sarah Palin is from Alaska, where "we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security." And the rest of us don't, you see.

And the links Palin suggests we consume are made out of the three fossil-food groups: coal, oil and gas. As she puts it: "Many states have abundant coal...Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy."

Ok, what I don't understand is...how many Westerners can literally sit on a mountain of oil and gas? And how do they literally stay on top? But I digress.

Something Governor Palin doesn't seem to understand is that her dirty energy entrée is spoiling prosperity/opportunity/security in Alaska. The US Global Climate Science program's analysis of the impacts of global warming throughout the US - conducted under the Bush administration - documented that

Now you'd think that as Governor, Sarah Palin must have noticed the melting permafrost, collapsing roads and buildings, villages falling into the sea, burning forests and so on. Apparently Governor Palin favors Baked Alaska.

As for the rest of us, if we want prosperity, opportunity, and security, clean energy is the right dish. We need to send Palin's dirty energy entrée right back to the kitchen.

This post first appeared on Pete's blog on NRDC's Switchboard.

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Memo to Washington Post and editorial page editor Fred Hiatt: We get it already.

You don’t like clean energy. You don’t mind publishing unfact-checked articles again and again. And if somebody wants to publish an op-ed attacking climate legislation focused exclusively on the cost of action while never actually discussing climate change or the cost of inaction, hey, why not? It’s not like there’s a major study by a leading journalist criticizing the entire media for such biased coverage (see “The press misrepresented the economic debate over cap and trade…. The press allowed opponents of climate action to replicate the false debate over climate science in the realm of climate economics. The press … sometimes assumed that doing nothing about climate change carried no cost“).

But running a piece by Sarah Palin, “The ‘Cap And Tax’ Dead End,” that is devoid of original arguments and simply repeats tired myths is a new low. As Art Brodsky writes in HuffingtonPost,

Is there any sane person left over in the Post management?

Palin is devoid of knowledge on climate (see “McCain VP Palin is a global-warming-denying, Pat Buchanan acolyte” and Palin on CBS: “I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate.”). As for energy, simply being a (quitting) governor of an energy state doesn’t make her an expert any more than being able to see Russia from a tall building in Alaska makes her a foreign-policy expert. Indeed, Palin does not even know basics of Alaska energy.

In fact, Palin is so ignorant of energy, so practiced at repeating falsehoods, that in September, during the campaign, the Washington Post itself gave her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of “Four Pinocchios” for continuing to “to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers.”

Amazingly, the Post has published an op-ed on climate change legislation by the governor of the state that is currently the most battered by climate change, without any discussion of climate change or its impacts on that state. Heck, even Alaska GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski pointed out in a May 2006 speech on climate change that the tremendous recent warming had opened the door to the “voracious spruce bark beetle,” which devastated over three million acres in Alaska, “providing dry fuel for outbreaks of enormous wild fires.”

In one of the most unintentionally humorous pieces of crap the Post has ever subjected on the public, Palin states:

I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

Seriously.

[Silver lining note: In a perverse way, perhaps we should be grateful to the Post. Probably the best thing that could happen to climate legislation is if Palin becomes the lead spokesperson attacking it.]

Let’s set aside the rather obvious fact that the bill that doesn’t even start imposing a cap until 2012, so it’s absurd to assert it will “undermine our recovery over the short term.” The reverse case is, in fact, stronger — see Nobelist Krugman attacks “junk economics”: Climate action “now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump” by giving “businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities.”

Moreover, even in 2012, the total value of the allowances will be under $50 billion (in a $15 trillion economy) and all that money is going to be returned to the economy, so again, like all economic models show, the bill will have no significant negative impact.

No, what’s so laughable about this piece is that Palin wouldn’t even be considered by the Post as a suitable candidate for an op-ed on the climate bill if it weren’t for the national media’s focus on personality-driven politics. As Art Brodsky writes in HuffingtonPost:

With all the talk about how newspapers are dying, can we add one more reason to the list of horribles — suicide. The “salon” scandal still hasn’t died down, not after the paper’s ombudsman published his scathing critique calling the intimate dinners at publisher Katharine Weymouth’s house an “ethical lapse of monumental proportions.” The damage to the credibility of the paper can’t be measured. How often does a publisher print a mea culpa as Weymouth did?

How does the Post regain its equilibrium? How does it recover not only from this disaster but also from the dismissal of popular blogger Dan Froomkin, whose sacking led to great protests from the readers the Post execs didn’t think existed?

Why, by putting the soon-to-be ex-gov on the op-ed page, one of the prime places of real estate left in the newspaper world? Not to put too fine a point on it — is there any sane person left over in the Post management?

The op-ed page, despite what conservatives say, is seen by progressives as a neo-con haven, sheltering talents like Jim Hoagland and conservatives like Kathleen Parker. But Palin is another case entirely. It’s not simply that no one who saw her last two press conferences about her quitting Alaska for the bright lights of the Lower 48 believes she actually wrote the piece. Ghost-writing is a fine established art. Few politicians do their own writing.

It’s quite another to believe that she actually knows or cares sufficiently about cap-and-trade and environmental legislation to care enough to write about it for a major newspaper. And even if she does, what possible justification on Earth is there for the Post publishing her?

The only one I can think of is to “get people talking” about the Post page. To create “buzz.” Well, there’s good “buzz” and bad “buzz.” This is definitely the latter. It’s not only that Palin has no constituency to speak of. It’s not even that she has been trashed by the right, in addition to criticism by the left. She has no authority to write an article like this and the Post has no business running one.

At the least, and it’s a far stretch, a global-warming denier like Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) represents a constituency — the oil industry and the people of his state. Palin has just abandoned whatever electoral constituency she had, and now the Post is helping to establish herself in this brave new world of hers with conservative celebritydom and punditocracy.

The Lerner family, the owners of the Nationals, finally let their manager go after one too many embarrassments. It’s time for the owners of the Post to wake up and to realize that having a joke of an op-ed page is no joke.

That’s what I’ve been saying — trade Fred Hiatt (see “Memo to Washington Post: Editorial page editor Fred Hiatt just recycled a right-wing WSJ op-ed. If you won’t fire him, could you move him over to obits where he can’t hurt anyone?“).

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Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

The cap-and-trade climate and energy bill passed by the House last month is not a perfect piece of legislation. Critics on the right and left have leveled tough criticisms at it, questioning whether it will do much to accomplish its stated goal of cutting carbon emissions or if it will overburden average consumers with high energy prices.

Palin takes to the pages of The Washington Post to blast away at President Obama's cap-and-trade plan. Too bad she's firing away with blanks. Above, Palin on the campaign trail last year.Courtesy sskennel via FlickrThese criticisms, typically, come backed by well-reasoned arguments. The liberal critique of Waxman-Markey focuses on the questionable decision to give away emissions credits to polluters and concerns that the Agriculture Department, not the EPA, will review and regulate carbon offsets in the farming sector. Many conservatives, meanwhile, have argued that the best way to curb emissions and spur a clean-energy revolution is with a carbon tax, not a complicated cap-and-trade scheme.

So when the person John McCain once said knows more about energy policy than anyone else in America pens an op-ed for one of the nation's highest-regarded newspapers, it's time to pay attention and learn something.

Sarah Palin, the soon-to-be-ex-governor of Alaska, has an opinion piece (a screed, really) in Tuesday's Washington Post in which she shrilly blasts away at "President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan," calling it "an enormous threat" to the U.S. economy.

Juicy stuff. Ordinarily, we'd let David Roberts out of his cage to respond, but he's happily away on vacation. Joe Romm will surely be along in the morning with a strong piece tearing apart Palin's piece. [Yep, here's his piece.] But for now, here are some first thoughts from me:

Palin's thesis comes loaded with plenty of rhetoric and zero facts. It offers nothing more than assertions about the emissions reduction part of the bill, ignores the energy investment and green jobs provisions, blames "Washington bureaucrats" for hampering oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (not Congress, where elected lawmakers have repeatedly expressed the American public's desire to keep ANWR off limits), and fails to even take note of the underlying issue -- catastrophic climate change.

Couldn't Palin's ghostwriters have cribbed from any of the well-researched, highly technical criticisms produced by just about every conservative think tank in the land?

Grist's David Roberts and other contributors have answered every one of Palin's "points" in the past:

Palin says the bill would result in skyrocketing energy prices. Higher prices are surely likely, David noted last month, but not on the order of what Palin thinks.

Palin: "Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source."

See David's debate with clean-coal flack Joe Lucas. There's no such thing as clean coal, and even if the technology appears in 10-15 years as predicted, it will be so costly as to effectively raise energy prices substantially on the regular folk Palin claims to be defending.

Palin: "Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy."

See Kate Sheppard's piece from last summer. The oil shale pipe dream has been around since the 1970s. The fact is, the technology doesn't exist yet to extract it cost-effectively, and won't for many years (if ever). And extraction comes with a host of environmental problems.

As for the nuclear energy canard, the fact remains that most Americans don't want to live anywhere near a nuclear power plant or a storage facility for highly radioactive nuclear waste. France is a place where bureaucrats truly hold enormous power, and that explains in part why the central government was able to push nuclear so effectively. Thankfully, our American system is more democratic.

Palin: "We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama's plan will result in the latter."

Governor, listen closely: oil is a commodity. Even if we increase domestic production, we'll still be held prisoner to Russia's and Saudi Arabia's ability to meet global demand -- demand being driven by China, India and many other developing nations.

Ironically, Palin concludes her piece by asking, "Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation? Yes, we can."

Yes, governor, we can accomplish that goal. And there are probably several ways of doing it. But each path requires thoughtful policymaking, not just hot air for hot air's sake.

--

UPDATE: Media Matters now has a quick debunking of Palin's op-ed. And so does The Atlantic and Huffington Post.

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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (from left), Senator Mark Begich, Congressman Don Young and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar arrive at a public forum meeting in Anchorage Tuesday to discuss Outer Continental Shelf development.Courtesy Alaska governor's officeSarah Palin seems to have discovered global warming, and she’s got just the thing to do about it.

Yesterday the Alaska governor said climate change is harming her state, but she insisted that expanding natural gas production is the best way to lessen the effects of global warming. She was speaking at an Anchorage hearing held by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who is holding several such meetings around the country to consider renewing oil and gas leases on the outer continental shelf.

“We Alaskans are living with the changes that you are observing in Washington,” the Republican governor said.  “The dramatic decreases in the extent of summer sea ice, increased coastal erosion, melting of permafrost, decrease in alpine glaciers and overall ecosystem changes are very real to us.”

She promoted Alaska’s vast natural gas reserves as a cleaner alternative to oil and coal and a realistic “transition” energy source while the country shifts to a low-carbon energy system.

“There is no way to achieve these goals in the next few decades without a dramatic increase in domestic natural gas and a strong effort to modestly increase domestic oil production,” she said. “Keeping Alaska’s OCS [outer continental shelf] lease sales, exploration, and development programs on schedule, especially in the Beaufort Sea and Chukchi Sea, is critically important to this effort.

She wasn’t so much abandoning the “drill, baby, drill” mantra that came to define the McCain-Palin energy strategy in last fall’s election as she was offering a new rationale for it -- cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Palin stopped just short of explicitly saying she believes humans are causing changes to the climate.

“She didn’t say that directly. I think it’s implied … That was a significant step for her,” said Kate Troll, executive director of Alaska Conservation Voters.

Cindy Shogan, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, thought it was less significant.

“I don’t know if this signals an official change in her thinking,” she said. “But she is a pretty savvy politician and ‘maverick,’ and I think she sees the writing on the wall that there’s going to be some legislation and some administrative action on climate change, that this is something she’s going to need to address.”

In her comments [PDF] on Tuesday, Palin linked the desire of “many” to cut greenhouse gas emissions with the natural gas pipeline she has long hoped to build in her state.

“Many believe that in order to mitigate these long term and systematic changes it will require a national and global effort to decrease the release of human produced greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” she said. “However, simply waiting for low carbon emitting renewable capacity to be large enough will mean that it will be too late to meet the mitigation goals for reducing CO2 that will be required under most credible climate change models …

“Meeting these goals will require a dramatic increase, in the very near term, to preferred available fuels - including natural gas – that have a very low carbon footprint and that can be used within the existing energy infrastructure. These available fuels are required to supply the nation’s energy needs during the transition to green energy alternatives.”

The statement marks a shift from her position on the campaign trail last August, when she told the conservative magazine Newsmax: “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.”

Palin’s office did not immediately return requests for comment on whether the statements signaled a change in the governor's thinking. She continued to advocate for a natural gas pipeline connecting Alaska's reserves with the lower 48 states, for continued investment in the state's established gas developments, and for access to gas reserves in the Beaufort and Chuchki seas off Alaska’s northern coast. (The Anchorage Daily News has a good map of the state’s reserves.)

Troll said her conservation group supports the pipeline and the state’s current natural gas developments but opposes development in the fragile ecosystem of the Chuchki Sea. She said she approved of Palin proposing natural gas, a low-carbon fossil fuel alternative to coal and oil, as a temporary energy source on the road to a greener-energy economy.

“We have a lot of known reserves, and it could be an ideal bridge fuel for America,” Troll said. “Does the need for more natural gas justify us going into other high-risk areas? That’s the question that Salazar’s trying to answer.”

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For all of her "drill, baby, drill" cheerleading, at least Governor Sarah Palin is willing to have a discussion about renewable energy sources like wind and geothermal. According to the Coal River Wind Project, the West Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Rick Thompson and a handful of House Rules Committee members have just blocked a resolution for the development of a nationally acclaimed industrial wind farm and responsible underground coal mining on Coal River Mountain from going to the floor for an actual debate or vote.

That's not all: Despite 41 co-sponsors, including 4 out of the 5 Delegates who actually live in the same county as the proposed wind farm and underground mining plan, Speaker Rick Thompson and his Big Coal posse have turned their backs on coal miners and coal mining families and rejected any discussion in these hard economic times for a resolution to "promote the diversification of the local and state economies and energy portfolios while allowing for continued responsible underground coal mining in the area."

Beholden to out of state coal companies, this is the WV House Rules Committee message to the nation: No stinkin' green jobs-producing, $2 million annual tax revenue-providing, clean energy community-building and diversified economy and new jobs initiatives for us.

If Sarah Palin can declare her intent to meet half of her state's electricity needs from renewable energy sources by 2025, why is the WV House Rules Committee putting a gag order on this critical debate for a transition in the coalfields into the new economy?

Meanwhile, a real debate by both sides has been flourishing at Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo blog on the merits of wind vs. mountaintop removal operations, and other green jobs initiatives.

Here are the three parts:

And West Virginia development groups like JOBS have also come up with some brilliant proposals for biomass, and green energy manufacturing projects for the region.

Find more information on the Coal River Wind project site.

Here's the actual resolution that was tabled last night:

HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 52

(By Delegates Susman, Longstreth, Manypenny, Perdue, Staggers, Fleischauer, Argento, Barker, Beach, Boggs, Brown, Cann, Crosier, Doyle, Eldridge, Ellem, Fragale, Guthrie, Hatfield, Iaquinta, Klempa, Kominar, Lawrence, Louisos, Mahan, Manchin, Martin, McGeehan, Miley, Moore, Morgan, Moye, Reynolds, Rodighiero, Shook, Stephens, Talbott, Webster, Wells, White and Wooton)

Supporting the development of a permanent utility-scale wind farm on Coal River Mountain in the Coal River Mountain Area of Raleigh County, West Virginia, in order to promote the diversification of the local and state economies and energy portfolios while allowing for continued responsible underground coal mining in the area.

Whereas, the West Virginia coal industry provides a significant amount of energy for the United States and a vital source of jobs and economic revenue for West Virginia, including 1,100 mining jobs and over $1.5 million in annual coal severance taxes for Raleigh County; and

Whereas, there are vast opportunities for diversifying the state energy portfolio, while creating new industries, new jobs and new sources of revenue that can complement those contributed by the coal industry in southern West Virginia counties such as Raleigh County; and

Whereas, wind power provides one such opportunity, as there are substantial, economically feasible wind resources of both the large and small-scale that can be developed in southern West Virginia; and

Whereas, studies have shown that wind resources and the economic benefits of wind development are severely diminished and development rendered economically prohibitive as the ridge altitude is reduced as a result of surface mining; and

Whereas, a Coal River Mountain wind farm, consisting of 164 wind turbines and generating 328 megawatts of electricity, would provide over $1.74 million in annual property taxes to Raleigh County; and coal severance taxes related to proposed mountaintop removal mining, by comparison, would provide the county with only $36,000 per year; and

Whereas, a wind farm of this magnitude, combined with incentives for development of other wind farms in Raleigh County and other counties in southern West Virginia, could result in the development and growth of a viable and lasting wind industry; and

Whereas, by stimulating new economic opportunities in the rural parts of Raleigh County, the wind farm would provide greater opportunities for economic diversification than would be provided by the surface mining operations proposed for Coal River Mountain; and

Whereas, wind power development on Coal River Mountain is possible because of the unique topography of the region, and wind is a natural resource from which much of southern West Virginia will be unable to benefit economically if surface mining continues and is expanded on, and in adjacent areas of, Coal River Mountain; and

Whereas, Raleigh County coal production and mine productivity have been steadily declining since 1997, even as surface mine production has expanded, thus indicating that coal reserves in Raleigh County are being rapidly depleted, as will be the jobs and severance taxes that coal mining currently contributes to the county's economy; and

Whereas, a December 2008 study shows that long-term economic stewardship of Coal River Mountain, allowing for both the continued recovery of coal by expanding underground mining while preserving the surface landscape of Coal River Mountain for wind farming, affords substantial and relatively greater economic benefits through diversified economic development and energy production than surface mining would, and which surface mining activity alone eliminates; and

Whereas, underground mining in West Virginia employs approximately twice the number of workers per ton of coal produced than surface mining; and
Whereas, developing alternative industries is necessary to ensure the future economic vitality of the Coal River Valley; and

Whereas, the proposed wind farm development for Coal River Mountain received the annual, nationally recognized and highly competitive "Building Economic Alternatives" award by the non-profit Green America (formerly Co-Op America); and

Whereas, formal surveys and opinion polls show that a decisive majority of West Virginia citizens support a ban on the surface mining practice of mountaintop removal mining, like that currently being permitted on Coal River Mountain, and that 62 percent of West Virginians support wind development rather than mountaintop removal mining for Coal River Mountain; therefore, be it

Resolved by the Legislature of West Virginia:

That the West Virginia Legislature supports the development of a permanent commercial wind farm on Coal River Mountain in the Coal River Mountain Area of Raleigh County, West Virginia, in order to promote the diversification of local and state economies and energy portfolios while continuing to properly evaluate the permitting of responsible underground coal mining activity in the area; and, be it

Further Resolved, That the Clerk of the (House / Senate) is hereby directed to forward a copy of this resolution to the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection.

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