Better Planet » Sarah Palin

Palin Discovers Climate Change

Benjamin Nugent — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:40:26 +0000

She just denied she ever denied manmade global warming. On ABC News. And got easily schooled by the press after.

I can appreciate the tragedy of her situation. She denied man-made climate change quite explicitly twice. Part of her whole thing is that she’s not a duplicitous Washington type. And she’s an unconventionally-educated woman of the people. So why not stay with the ill-informed thing? But there’s only so far you can go in that direction with the moderate wing of her party, and with independents.

I feel like the Obama campaign’s fate will rest partly on whether they can knock Palin off her pedestal in the coming weeks. This should give them something to work with.

Image: flickr/zieak

Palin’s Achilles Heel

Benjamin Nugent — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:05:55 +0000

There is much speculation about how Obama should go after Sarah Palin. If he goes after her resume—she was mayor of a town of 7,000, then the governor of a state of 680,000—that leaves him open to the absurd but potentially effective argument that these credentials are superior to those of a senator. If he goes after her evident backwardness or unusually conservative religious beliefs, the gun/bikini photo, the never traveled anywhere thing—well, we know how the clinging to guns and religion thing went over.

It seems to me you say, she thinks the melting of arctic ice isn’t caused by humans. She thinks polar bears aren’t endangered. She doesn’t think Exxon should have to pay up. All those non-radical conservatives in Colorado, Ohio, and Nevada care about this. (See this recap of her record so far). It’s not a personal attack, and it’s not just a reiteration of the tired McCain administration = Bush administration charge.

It’s just a way of making the effects of her ignorance concrete. She’s not just a smiling hick in a bathing suit holding a gun by a pool. She’s a smiling hick in a bathing suit standing on a melting iceberg.

Image: flickr/Chesi – Fotos CC

Sarah Palin Looks Oily, Gustav Looks Bad

Benjamin Nugent — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 01:51:28 +0000

Environmentalism needs good villains. Rather than rely on the public’s ability to blame its own high-consuming tendencies, it’s nice if we can let them point to somsebody who’s trying to kill us all. Sarah Palin is just the thing.

I mean, look at her. That is the smile of the demonically possessed. More substantively, she is typical of Alaskan Republicans in that she’s a staunch ally of big oil. She supports drilling in ANWR, and generally comes down in favor of letting energy companies run pipelines wherever they want. They in turn have contributed generously to her campaigns.

She has apparently already caused Hurricane Gustav, which, according to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who has orchestrated a relatively orderly evacuation, looks to be a worse storm than Katrina.

Image: flickr/Thomas Roche