President Palin? | Green Energy News

September 4, 2008 – Vol.13 No.24

PRESIDENT PALIN?

There isn’t a man alive that isn’t a sucker for a pretty face. (This editor included, John McCain too.) Yet, as the saying goes, beauty is often skin deep: Sarah Palin’s convictions on energy, the environment and global warming are anything but pretty.

She’s for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and generally wants more offshore drilling. She thinks that the warming planet isn’t man’s fault. She doesn’t care if polar bears are endangered because of disappearing Arctic ice. She doesn’t want investments in renewable energy. She’s out of sync with McCain who still thinks the manmade global warming must be addressed and is still opposed to drilling in ANWR. And she’s out of sync with many prominent Republicans who support renewable energy and are concerned about global warming.

The common belief is that the Vice-President follows in lockstep along with the President’s agenda, but the current administration and the previous one prove otherwise. Dick Cheney has obviously been influential in the Bush White House on the war in Iraq, energy and other issues. Al Gore and Bill Clinton often worked hand in hand. It was Al Gore, for instance, who led the administration’s charge on Kyoto, the global warming treaty. It’s hard to imagine the outspoken and opinionated Ms. Palin NOT being a full partner in a McCain White House.

A Palin Vice Presidency could be tough on the green energy industry. Obama and Biden are are fully on board the green bandwagon. The topic will come up in the campaign. We need to listen to her response. Even under George W. Bush, an oil man years ago, wind, solar and biofuel industries have done well. Aside from a desire to drill offshore for more oil, the Bush administration has been generally supportive of new energy technologies to replace our dependance on oil. Bush, too, believes that technology will fix global warming.

A McCain/ Palin White House could reverse even the work of the Bush Administration on green energy. McCain may still want emissions trading to combat global warming but in the Senate he missed eight important votes on zero emission renewable energy.

The green energy industry is considered the next big thing that will continue to create, jobs, business opportunities and yes, wealth and tax revenues. Building the industry of clean, renewable and efficient energy has been “a long hard slog” to use the words of former defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld in a different context. It would be unfortunate that the growing industry gets stunted by a McCain/Palin administration.

The Vice-President is only a heartbeat away from the Presidency. McCain, already with health problems, will be the oldest President to be sworn into the office. If he survives four years, or even eight, Ms. Palin, still relatively young, will be trying very hard to be the first woman president.