Although the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee markup on the climate bill has been postponed to the fall, the public debate on ACES rages on. Yesterday, future ex-Governor Sarah Palin took to the Washington Post’s op-ed page with a diatribe against “President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan.” Unsurprisingly, Palin’s take – apparently an attempt to bluster back onto the national political scene – showcased her trademark comfort with ignorance and fundamental misunderstanding of cap and trade in general and the American Clean Energy and Security Act in particular. It’s troubling that one of our nation’s most widely read and respected newspapers found Palin’s piece fit to print, and it’s hard for me to see how distributing such misinformation can be good for democracy or society in general. Luckily, however, the “chattering classes” responded with a barrage of rebuttals and critiques:
Gov. Palin’s Misleading Washington Post Op-ed (Media Matters Action Network)
A handy fact check with helpful links debunking Palin’s most spurious claims and providing actual analysis on the costs of the climate bill.
Palin eschews facts and economics in blasting cap-and-trade bill (Grist)
Grist’s executive editor Russ Walker has a point-by-point rebuttal of Palin’s piece, neatly summed up thusly:
Palin’s thesis comes loaded with plenty of rhetoric and zero facts. It offers nothing more than assertions about the emissions reduction part of the bill, ignores the energy investment and green jobs provisions, blames “Washington bureaucrats” for hampering oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (not Congress, where elected lawmakers have repeatedly expressed the American public’s desire to keep ANWR off limits), and fails to even take note of the underlying issue—catastrophic climate change.
What Gov. Palin Forgot (Huffington Post)
Senator Kerry points out that Palin fails to even mention the crisis of global warming, despite its already disruptive effects in Alaska, before going on to emphasize the environmental, economic and security costs of inaction.
An op-ed on Guantanamo policy that fails to acknowledge the existence of terrorists would not be taken seriously. Neither should an op-ed on energy reform that fails to mention the irrefutable reality of climate change.
And, unfortunately, even in the areas Gov. Palin does focus on, she gets things wrong. She focuses on energy production, but ignores the huge expansion of new, clean energy sources made possible through smart energy reform legislation.
Sarah Palin Does Not Understand Cap and Trade (The Daily Dish)
In addition to pointing out that revenues generated from the cap and trade mechanism are designed to benefit the poorest quintile of Americans, Conor Clarke recaps some Econ 101 for Governor Palin’s benefit.
The point of cap and trade is to solve a problem of social cost: As an energy consumer, I am imposing a cost on society (pollution) that I do not take into account when I make the original decision to consume.
This happens all the time. My decision to drive creates traffic that imposes a cost on society. A company’s decision to fish in the ocean imposes a cost on the world’s common stock of fisheries. A banker’s decision to take on a huge amount of risk creates danger for the economy as a whole. The problem is that none of these private actors adequately bears the cost of their decisions. So, the usual solution is to increase the price of these decisions — with congestion charges, or private property rights, or taxes — so that private consumers take into account social costs.
Palin’s Recipe for Baked Alaska (NRDC Switchboard)
NRDC’s Climate Campaign Director Pete Altman weighs in with the effects of dirty energy and global warming on Palin’s home state, as documented by the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
Washington Post, Fred Hiatt turn op-ed page into a “joke” with yet another falsehood-filled piece attacking climate action and clean energy — by GOP quitter-in-chief Sarah “Four Pinocchios” Palin! (Climate Progress)
Joe Romm has a great tirade calling out the Post for its lack of journalistic integrity, and also refutes Palin’s contention that cap-and-trade would stunt economic recovery in the short term.
Let’s set aside the rather obvious fact that the bill that doesn’t even start imposing a cap until 2012, so it’s absurd to assert it will “undermine our recovery over the short term.” The reverse case is, in fact, stronger — see Nobelist Krugman attacks “junk economics”: Climate action “now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump” by giving “businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities.”
Moreover, even in 2012, the total value of the allowances will be under $50 billion (in a $15 trillion economy) and all that money is going to be returned to the economy, so again, like all economic models show, the bill will have no significant negative impact.
