McClatchy has an important fact check on Sarah Palin’s latest interview with Charlie Gibson–noting her, um, fluid views on climate change.
Charles Gibson seemed a little confused about Gov. Sarah Palin’s answers on global warming when he interviewed her this week while strolling beside the trans-Alaska pipeline.
The ABC anchor has plenty of Alaska voters for company. Since entering the governor’s race here two years ago, Palin has shimmied back and forth on the key question of whether warming trends are natural or a byproduct of human activity.
Most interesting, though, is the description of where Palin got the money to sue the Federal government in an attempt to delist the polar bear as an endangered species.
Earlier this year, the state legislature approved $2 million for a conference inviting climate change skeptics here to hash out the causes.
"It is important to remember that climate change is occurring, but then it has occurred continuously for millions of years," wrote the legislature’s Republican leaders, House Speaker John Harris and Senate President Lyda Green. "And, so far, there are too many dissenting opinions to state matter-of-factly that it is being caused by humans."
The project was derided by some as a "conference to nowhere" and now appears unlikely to take place. Much of the money was later diverted to fund a lawsuit by the Palin administration against listing the polar bear as a threatened species. [my emphasis]
The reality-haters in Alaska wanted to host a party for similar reality-haters. But instead, the listing of the polar bear as an endangered species gave them their opportunity to challenge reality on a national scale. With the added bonus for them, of course, that if they won, they could continue to trash the polar bear’s habitat with abandon.
I realize Sarah Palin is suing the government for practical reasons, so, if she won, Alaska could continue to get rich off of selling the Japanese gas and oil, without worrying whether it’ll wipe out polar bears once and for all.
But at some level, isn’t she just going after the polar bears as a propaganda stunt?
Photo credit: Steve Hillebrand / USFWS