Busted!

Eugene Robinson digs up this gem:

Sarah Palin is such a cold-eyed skeptic about the Copenhagen summit on climate change that it’s no surprise she would call on President Obama not to attend. After all, Obama might join other leaders in acknowledging that warming is a “global challenge.” He might entertain “opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” He might even explore ways to “participate in carbon-trading markets.”

Oh, wait. Those quotes aren’t from some smug Euro-socialist manifesto. They’re from an administrative order Palin signed in September 2007, as governor of Alaska, establishing a “sub-Cabinet” of top state officials to develop a strategy for dealing with climate change.

Back then, Palin was the governor of a state where “coastal erosion, thawing permafrost, retreating sea ice, record forest fires, and other changes are affecting, and will continue to affect, the lifestyles and livelihoods of Alaskans,” as she wrote. Faced with that reality, she sensibly formed the high-level working group to chart a course of action.

“Climate change is not just an environmental issue,” wrote Palin. “It is also a social, cultural, and economic issue important to all Alaskans.”

Palin’s belief in reality had to be sacrificed in order to appease the base, I guess. It just saddens me because Palin is probably the one person who could sell the reality of global climate change to her reality-challenged fans, since she lives in a state that is experiencing big changes.

Robinson digs up this August 2008 newsletter from Palin (only a month before she became McCain’s running mate:

We are faced with significant questions: How fast will the climate warm? How warm will it get? What effects will the warming have? Is there anything we can do to slow the increase or the extent
of the warming? Realizing that we can’t stop the warming, what can we do to adapt? And, what role should state government play in all of this?

To get the ball rolling, I signed Administrative Order 238 in September 2007, which directs a team of my cabinet members to prepare an Alaska Climate Change Strategy for my consideration. The strategy is to serve as a guide for a thoughtful, practical, timely, state of Alaska response to climate change. It is to identify priorities needing immediate attention along with longer-term steps we can take as a state to best serve all Alaskans and to do our part in the global response to this global phenomenon.

So in 2007 and 2008, when Palin had “actual responsibility” (as opposed to that slacker, Senator Obama) she acknowledged the reality of climate change and what it meant for her state. She also saw the need to address it. Now, her only responsibility is to enriching herself, climate change goes out the window:

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. 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. Unlike the proposals China and India offered prior to Copenhagen — which actually allow them to increase their emissions — President Obama’s proposal calls for serious cuts in our own long-term carbon emissions. Meeting such targets would require Congress to pass its cap-and-tax plans, 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 legislation, Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrats plan to regulate carbon emissions themselves, doing an end run around the American people.

Obviously the existence of hacked emails that say “trick” means that the permafrost will freeze back, the sea ice will expand, the forests will stop burning and the lifestyles of Alaskans will return to normal. I guess she was right that she could do more for Alaska out of office. She solved climate change!