Copenhagen
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The president's withdrawal from the conference, with an appearance planned near the summit's finish next week, would come as quite a surprise to a global community that has witnessed the reengagement of the United States in an international dialog about the fate of the planet from which the previous president had all but withdrawn until the end of his second term.

But, for a share of the American electorate which fears the consequences of limitations on the emissions of pollutants that could force the U.S. to find alternative, and in some cases more costly, sources of energy - the fabled "energy tax'' - talk such as Palin's comes straight from the wand of the maestro.

From Palin's new viewpoint, the consensus of world science on the question of global warming represents "the radical environmental movement'' -- though this was not the same tune Palin was whistling when she ran for national office last year: "We've got to reduce emissions,'' she said during the 2008 campaign, and get other nations to "come along.''

From the world's viewpoint, Palin's apparent new opposition to any dialog involving the United States in Copenhagen represents the politics of radical retrenchment.

"With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point,'' Palin writes in an Op-ed essay appearing in Wednesday's Washington Post. "The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.

"Climate-gate," Palin writes of the e-mails and other documents obtained from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia by hackers, "exposes a highly politicized scientific circle -- the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather,'' the former governor of Alaska writes, "but they would change our economy for the worse.''

"Drill, baby, drill": A hole so deep that no one but the most radicalized base of the Republican Party might possibly take seriously the pivoting of Palin on the question. Now she has a memoir and a book-tour, Going Rogue, apparently taking the title to heart.

"I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics,'' writes Palin, who also has entertained creationism as a reasonable counterpoint to evolutionary theory, at least something worthy of teaching in the schools.

"I am a proponent of teaching both,'' she said during her campaign for governor in 2006. "And you know, I say this too as the daughter of a science teacher. Growing up with being so privileged and blessed to be given a lot of information on, on both sides of the subject -- creationism and evolution. It's been a healthy foundation for me. But don't be afraid of information and let kids debate both sides."

"Snake oil,'' Palin called the science of climate change in a recent radio interview, suggesting: "The fact is, the Caribou population is increasing.''

Yet Palin was far more generous about the challenge of climate change and what the world should do about it during last year's debate with Vice President Joe Biden, who then asserted flatly that global warming is "man-made.''

This is what Palin said in debate with Biden in October 2008:

" Well, as the nation's only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it's real.

"I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet. But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?

"We have got to clean up this planet. We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that.''

And just eight months ago, at an Interior Department hearing, the then-governor of Alaska said this: "We Alaskans are living with the changes that you are observing in Washington, 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.''

Yet this is no cause for curtailing drilling for new oil, she maintained: "Stopping domestic energy production of preferred fuels does not solve the issues associated with global warming and threatened or endangered species, but it can make them worse....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 [carbon dioxide] that will be required under most credible climate-change models.''


"As governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change sub-cabinet to start dealing with the impacts. We've got to reduce emissions,'' Palin said in the October 2008 vice presidential debate with Biden. "John McCain is right there with an "all of the above" approach to deal with climate change impacts.

"We've got to become energy independent for that reason. Also as we rely more and more on other countries that don't care as much about the climate as we do, we're allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for. So even in dealing with climate change, it's all the more reason that we have an "all of the above" approach, tapping into alternative sources of energy and conserving fuel, conserving our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons so that we can clean up this planet and deal with climate change.''

Palin has staked a new stance on the issue little more than a year later - no more of that encouraging other nations "to come along with us with the impacts of climate change.''

Now, it's "come along'' for a new ride, preaching to the chorus of "Climate-gate'' protesters who maintain that all the world's science suddently has been reduced to rubble with a pile of hacked emails from England -- regardless of all the other science that has been conducted throughout the world.

"As governor of Alaska,'' Palin writes in the Post Op-ed, "I took a stand against politicized science when I sued the federal government over its decision to list the polar bear as an endangered species despite the fact that the polar bear population had more than doubled.

"I got clobbered for my actions by radical environmentalists nationwide, but I stood by my view that adding a healthy species to the endangered list under the guise of "climate change impacts" was an abuse of the Endangered Species Act. This would have irreversibly hurt both Alaska's economy and the nation's, while also reducing opportunities for responsible development.

"Our representatives in Copenhagen should remember that good environmental policymaking is about weighing real-world costs and benefits -- not pursuing a political agenda. That's not to say I deny the reality of some changes in climate -- far from it. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. I was one of the first governors to create a subcabinet to deal specifically with the issue and to recommend common-sense policies to respond to the coastal erosion, thawing permafrost and retreating sea ice that affect Alaska's communities and infrastructure.

"But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes,'' she writes. "We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs. And those costs are real..

"President Obama has proposed serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions,'' Palin writes. "Meeting such targets would require Congress to pass its cap-and-tax proposals, which will result in job losses and higher energy costs (as Obama admitted during the campaign). That's not exactly what most Americans are hoping for these days. And as public opposition continues to stall Congress's cap-and-tax plans, Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrats plan to regulate carbon emissions themselves, doing an end run around the American people.''

Palin writes: "In his inaugural address, President Obama declared his intention to "restore science to its rightful place."

"But instead of staying home from Copenhagen and sending a message that the United States will not be a party to fraudulent scientific practices, the president has upped the ante. He plans to fly in at the climax of the conference in hopes of sealing a "deal." Whatever deal he gets, it will be no deal for the American people.

"What Obama really hopes to bring home from Copenhagen is more pressure to pass the Democrats' cap-and-tax proposal,'' Palin writes. "This is a political move. The last thing America needs is misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs -- particularly when the push for such legislation rests on agenda-driven science.

"Without trustworthy science and with so much at stake, Americans should be wary about what comes out of this politicized conference. The president should boycott Copenhagen.''
 

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