Green As A Bush

There are distinct differences between the two Presidential candidates, and one of the big ones is the fact that John McSame's commitment to the environment and fighting climate change (being a Republican, this meant he took the mavericky step of admitting there might be a problem) was thrown overboard when he decided to go "drill drill drill" in order to try to win, and then was encased in concrete and sunk forever with the selection of Sarah Palin, who is one of the most anti-environmental politicians in the GOP. NY Times columnist Tom Friedman "drills down":

With his choice of Sarah Palin — the Alaska governor who has advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and does not believe mankind is playing any role in climate change — for vice president, John McCain has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.

Given the fact that Senator McCain deliberately avoided voting on all eight attempts to pass a bill extending the vital tax credits and production subsidies to expand our wind and solar industries, and given his support for lowering the gasoline tax in a reckless giveaway that would only promote more gasoline consumption and intensify our addiction to oil, and given his desire to make more oil-drilling, not innovation around renewable energy, the centerpiece of his energy policy — in an effort to mislead voters that support for drilling today would translate into lower prices at the pump today — McCain has forfeited any claim to be a green candidate.

So please, students, when McCain comes to your campus and flashes a few posters of wind turbines and solar panels, ask him why he has been AWOL when it came to Congress supporting these new technologies.

“Back in June, the Republican Party had a round-up,” said Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club. “One of the unbranded cattle — a wizened old maverick name John McCain — finally got roped. Then they branded him with a big ‘Lazy O’ — George Bush’s brand, where the O stands for oil. No more maverick.

“One of McCain’s last independent policies putting him at odds with Bush was his opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” added Pope, “yet he has now picked a running mate who has opposed holding big oil accountable and been dismissive of alternative energy while focusing her work on more oil drilling in a wildlife refuge and off of our coasts. While the northern edge of her state literally falls into the rising Arctic Ocean, Sarah Palin says, ‘The jury is still out on global warming.’ She’s the one hanging the jury — and John McCain is going to let her.”

Indeed, Palin’s much ballyhooed confrontations with the oil industry have all been about who should get more of the windfall profits, not how to end our addiction.

Let's get this out of the way now: McSame is not a maverick, he's a standard issue Oil-publican. He's changed his stances on all the issues he's differed with the party with in order to get the right wing vote, and when that didn't work, he took Sarah Palin. And Sarah Palin is even worse on the issue of the environment. The Republican party doesn't give a damn about saving the planet. They do give a damn about who gets the money for raping it.

McSame/Palin is as Green as George W Bush.