Can You Catch McCain-Palin Getting It Right?

San Francisco -- The McCain-Palin ticket gets basic facts about energy and the environment (and their own records) wrong so consistently that I'm issuing a challenge to illustrate the point. If anyone can find an important, consequential energy or environmental statement that McCain and Palin have gotten right -- besides the one I have identified below -- I'll send them a signed copy of my book Strategic Ignorance. (If more than one person submits the same true statement, the first one to do so will get a book.) 

So far I've identified only one such statement: It is true that John McCain bucked his party's Senate leadership to sponsor, with Senator Joe Lieberman, a pioneering bill to limit global warming pollution through a cap and trade system.

Set against that single truth, though, I've compiled the following dozen examples of fundamental untruths:

1. That offshore oil leasing now ("drill, baby drill") will yield additional oil supplies in the near term.
2. That when oil begins to flow from these leases it will flow in a sufficient volume to reduce gasoline prices. (McCain himself has conceded that this claim, central to his advertising and his convention, was false.)
3. That Palin was opposed to the "Bridge to Nowhere."
4. That Palin declined to seek earmarks as Mayor of Wasilla and Governor of Alaska.
5. That polar bear populations in Alaska are abundant and unthreatened by human activities.
6. That the McCain-Lieberman global warming bill was "voluntary" and did not establish "mandatory" limits on carbon emissions. (This bizarre claim was made by McCain himself during the primaries.)
7. That McCain has cast no important votes against renewable energy. (In fact he has cast more than 20.)
8. That Palin was the first governor to appoint a state commission to look at global warming.
9. That Alaska's environmental regulations adequately protect waterways from having mining waste dumped into them.
10. That hurricanes Katrina and Rita whipped through the Gulf of Mexico without causing any major oil spills.
11. That John McCain's energy policy differs fundamentally from George Bush's.
12. That the McCain-Palin ticket believes that windfall-profit taxes, as proposed by Senator Obama, would cut oil production. (Palin actually imposed one herself.)

To get a copy of my book, find a McCain-Palin statement about energy and the environment that is both true and consequential. ("Alaska produces energy" is not a consequential statement, even though it is true; nor will I consider "we favor nuclear " consequential for this challenge.) It has to have been stated in person by Palin or McCain since McCain won the nomination, and it has to have been uncontradicted by the ticket since then. Website postings don't count but ads do, since McCain has to say "I approve of this message." 

Send them to carl.pope@sierraclub.org, and I'll post the results here next week.

Incidentally, the title of my book refers to a concept in game theory -- that in certain "zero sum" games where someone has to lose, it can be possible for a player to do better for himself, and worse for other players, by refusing to learn as he goes along -- and that this strategy summed up George Bush's presidency. I am not suggesting that the McCain-Palin campaign is making similar, "strategic" use of their ignorance -- it's simply another example of a presidential campaign that, sadly, has become all tactics, with no strategy or vision at all.

Paid for by Sierra Club Political Committee, www.sierraclub.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Comments

[Greenie]

Good to see you call the duo on their drilling interests, too bad you give T. Boone Pickens a pass

[N. Sukumar]

Hmmm! Rather a tall order, don't you think? to find a statement - ANY statement - true or false, consequential or inconsequential - that has been uncontradicted by the free-lurching McCain-Palin ticket since the nomination!

[Pumpkinhead]

I am amazed at how many people here consider themselves "green" but will accept non-green policies from a politician just because of party affiliation. Hopefully, someday, the SC will begin withholding support from any politician that is not 100% green. And when you find one that is, work like hell to get him or her in office. The lesser of 2 evils is not acceptable and no true change will ever come from that.

[Dr. J. Singmaster]

When will Carl, ED, NRDC and other environmentalists wake up to the developing stench of our ever-expanding, never-ending messes of organic wastes and sewage as escapes of those messes start rotting the oceans to kill off seafood and phytoplankton so essential to take up carbon dioxide and start the whole ocean food chain.
I have sent Carl a program to get control of these messes with many benefits including generation of thousands of new jobs. Ask him about it. Dr. J. Singmaster

[Paul from Potomac]

Carl:
I have two good zingers for Palin:

Her support for the Alaskan gas pipeline is self-described as "...and we are doing our part to provide for America's energy independence..." It has become clear that the pipeline, if ever built, is intended for Canada's Alberta tar sands fields for extraction of the heavy oil from the formations there, not in the U.S.

The second act of the gas pipeline is that instead of reinjecting the natural gas from the fields in the north slope, it would be piped out to the gas pipeline. Guess what? Oil industry analysts confirm that without the added pressure from the natural gas reinjection, OIL PRODUCTION FROM THE NORTH SLOPE WOULD PRECIPITOUSLY DECLINE!!!

So much for energy independence. Apparently McCain and Palin want to annex Canada, as they seem to think that it's alreadt part of the United States.