Living the American Green

Leave Sarah ALONE!!!  Why can’t you all just LEAVE Sarah ALONE!

She just love the lime light, don't she?

Seriously though, doesn’t anyone else feel like Sarah Palin has some odd parallels with Britteny Spears?  I mean, say what you will about both ladies, but the national obsession with them has created a false and self perpetuating fame cycle that feeds its self by its very existence.  I mean, Brittany had her fame thing, now she just wants to preform, make her money, and get a modicum of sanity back in her life.    Meanwhile, Palin had her run at Vice President, but really just wants to get back to running Alaska, and let the … wait.  What?  She’s coming out with a book?  Attacking Katie Couric?  Really?

Ok, never mind.  She continues to bring this on her self.

I wrote a long FREAKING article for RGB about Sarah Palin and her energy policy, but contracts dictate that you have to click on the following link to read it.

You should read it.  It’s interesting.  And very surprising.   Sarah seems to no longer be the Drill Baby Drill Sarah of the past.

Sarah Palin: a Truth within a (fairly important) lie

During the campaign in 2008, a lot of people said a lot of things.  I remember the night that we were all introduced to Sarah Palin, at the same event that brought us Micheal Steele and Drill Baby Drill, and I remember being very impressed with the way Palin delivered.  She was strong, aggressive, and completely willing to roll up here sleeves and attack.  And she sounded like she was an expert in the one issue that the democrats have dominated in for years: Energy Efficiency.  She talked (at least vaguely knowledgeably) about energy independence, about oil and natural gas, and about the need (once the Drill Baby Drill chants had subsided) of looking at alternative forms of energy to go along with destroying some more Alaskan Wildlife.  Then, she said this, about her own roll in Alaska Energy markets:

“… and we began a nearly $40 billion natural-gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.”

Well, according to Conde Nast, she has since been found to be lying.  Or, if not lying outright, taking some big liberties with the word “Began”.

In fact, she got together a lot of money to start looking to see if a Natural Gas line was feasible.  So get this: apparently, Alaska is cold and unforgiving.  Wild, right?  As a result, it is hard and expensive to build a major pipeline from the Natural Gas to the Civilization, and everyone needs to be on board for a long, arduous and expensive building process to get to the promised land.  Also, everyone needs to hope real hard that Natural Gas is still worth the investment… oh, 20 years down the line when this pipeline thing starts to turn a real profit.  (not my numbers, BTW.  Cribbed, loosely, from the Conde Nast article).

Generally, this has always been my concern with the whole Drill here and Drill now mentality.  Because of the time it takes to get infrastructure set up, oil or gas out of the ground, and then oil and gas into the market, not only are you wringing the last little bits out of obsolete fossil fuels, but your also taking a huuuge risk that the entire process will still be cost effective way down the line.

Specifically, Sarah Palin totally exaggerated how far along the project was, and what her role in it had been.  She didn’t get a pipeline started… in fact her platform made the project much less likely to ever get off the ground. (more…)