By Sarah Palin, Washington Post Op-Ed - Page 2

Okie dokie.


Here's what John Kerry had to say about Sarah Palin's editorial.

The highlights:

To touch on the quote from General Zinni, I would argue that we're already seeing the consequences of, while not necessarily global warming, our energy policy. It's my firm belief that the thousands of young men and women (some of whom I served with) who lost their lives in Iraq died because of our pursuit of oil. Africa is full of brutal warlords as bad as Sadaam, but we don't invade them because their countries don't have any resources we need. As a former member of the military and one who faced the possibility of being recalled to active duty for Iraq (the 'shadow draft') I believe that our national security is severely threatened by our continuing reliance on oil from the Middle East. I don't want my kids to have to go to some god forsaken country in the desert and risk having their heads blown off just so that people don't have to give up their Hummers.

Surprised "her" Oped did not appear in the Washington Star instead--a joke of a conservative paper! It is probaly one of the newspapers she "reads."

My biggest problem with the whole Cap and Trade thing is the timing, and of course the big push to get it done RIGHT NOW. Disregarding the whole global warming aspect, and the idea that even if we stop producing CO2 that it won't make a difference with China and India refusing to limit their output...

We're in the "worst recession since the Great Depression" The unemployment rate is the worst in 26 years, and even Obama now says its going to get worse before it gets better. Obama also admits that energy costs are going to skyrocket for all American families once his plan is put into effect.

So is now really the best time to put this plan into effect? When so many American families are struggling, there are many homes still close to foreclosure, people are still losing their jobs by the tens or hundreds of thousands per month, and NOW is the time to possibly increase costs 4 fold??? How does this make any sense at all?

There has to be a way to make this work with developing energy technology without bankrupting every family in America.

First, I don't know enough about Global Warming to comment on what sort of effect, if any, Cap and Trade will have on emissions or climate.

Second, NEITHER OBAMAS CAP AND TRADE NOR PALINS ALASKAN PIPELINE AND OFFSHORE DRILLING PLANS can solve the problem of dependence on foreign oil.

There is no solution. At some point, oil will become scarce here and overseas and it will cost everyone a pretty penny. Maybe we have enough oil for our lifetime, but it's definitely a problem that our children and grandchildren will have to face. Really, if we care about the problems that future generations will face we all, globally (but especially Americans since we use 5 times more than the global average), need to cut back on energy consumption. We need to look into alternative energy sources.

Certainly, this foreign oil energy crisis, or the effects on the economy because of it will not be solved in any single politician's term.

Yes! See my quote is your last post, thanks!

Oh one more, the majority of Americans can't stand her and one for the road, she is savvy to a point but has no real smarts!

There's only 5 years worth of oil in those reserves. I think it's good to hold on to that as long as possible for both environmental and economic reasons.

I agree that now is not a good time to drive up the prices on anything, and it irks me that we're exporting jobs faster than we're exporting anything else. What really irritates me is when American companies export jobs so they can increase their profits rather than offer those jobs to the American consumers who are supporting them. If those companies had to pay American wages to their foreign workers, they would probably just hire Americans.

Come on, you guys can do better than that. Senator Obama made that statement in January of 2008. He wasn't President and he wasn't referring to the Waxman-Markey bill because it hadn't been proposed yet. President Obama has said nothing of the sort about the Waxman-Markey bill. The figures John Kerry quotes specifically analyze this bill.

It IS an interesting article.

So, as the bolded words show, the reason for the 25% rate hike has almost nothing to do with the cap and trade and almost everything to do with corporate greed. The utility companies aren't passing the extra costs along to their customers -- they're gouging them. The big oil companies did that to US last year without even having a carbon tax as an excuse.

As soon as you can actually connect the dots, I might believe you. Re-read that article. The extra cost imposed on the utility companies was negligible because the carbon cap was hardly higher than the existing carbon emissions. That's actually one of the big complaints of European environmentalists - the cap is way too high. The money isn't going to government taxes, it's going into the utility companies executives' pockets. Simple corporate greed. Capitalism in action, in other words. There simply aren't any dots connecting the cap and trade policy to the higher rates in Europe because they don't exist.

As for Senator Obama's remarks, you said that Senator Kerry was calling his boss a liar. That's patently false. Kerry was quoting figures from the Congressional Budget Office (a non-partisan group) that were specifically about the Waxman-Markey bill. The Waxman-Markey bill includes, among other things, provisions to give low-middle class income families credits to offset the higher rates.

But your logic, well, doesn't seem to be logical. I think it's an emotional knee-jerk reaction. Why, if lower carbon forms of power are cheaper, wouldn't you expect the utilities to pursue them? Am I supposed to believe that their primary goal is to shove as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as possible? If they're told that coal plants are going to get gradually more expensive to operate each year, why wouldn't they start adding wind, solar, and nuclear power to their portfolio? Nuclear, in particular, can already operate at costs comparable to coal plants and as solar/wind plants begin to achieve the same economies of scale as fossil fuel plants, their costs should become comparable as well given that they're built in the proper parts of the country.

We're going to need new power plants over the next few years/decades. Electric cars are a great reason. They would greatly reduce our dependence on oil. But we're going to need additional electricity to power those cars and as it stands right now, many of those new plants are going to be coal plants. With a cap and trade policy, the utilities are motivated to build wind / solar / nuclear plants instead of more coal plants.

If you care to dig into the Waxman-Markey bill and give me some real analysis on exactly how it's going to hurt us bad, then let's talk details. I think it's an important issue and a conversation worth having. John Boehner's big complaint about the bill was that "it's a piece of ****", so it should be pretty easy to beat that standard.