Palin: The Real Scandal

By Leonard Doyle in Anchorage
The Independent (UK)
September 6, 2008

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/palin-the-real-scandal-920803.html

Seen from the air, Sarah Palin's state is an
environmental wonderland. From Anchorage to the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge, there is a vast landscape of
snow-capped peaks, fjords, crystal glaciers, coastal
lagoons, wide river deltas and tundra.

The guardian of this wilderness - and Governor of
Alaska - has, this week, become one of the most
recognisable faces in the world. But behind her beaming
smile and wholesome family values is a woman aligned
with the big oil and coal firms that are racing to
exploit Alaska's vast energy reserves. In the short
term, that has bought her popularity at home.

"I love the woman," the pilot on our flight shouts over
the noise of the engine, "especially what she wants to
do with oil, we just have to drill more, there is no
alternative. What's the point of leaving it all in the
ground?"

It is a stance that guaranteed John McCain's new
running mate a rapturous reception at the Republican
convention this week where the response to the coming
energy crisis was a chant of "drill, baby, drill".

But the woman who could soon be a 72-year-old's
heartbeat away from the United States presidency has an
environmental policy so toxic it would make the
incumbent, George Bush, blush.

Mr McCain has stressed he is concerned about global
warming and has come out against drilling in the Arctic
reserve. But, in recent weeks, he has wobbled on the
issue. And environmentalists are describing Mrs Palin,
who denies climate change is man-made, as "either
grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading".

She wants to start drilling. She wants to block US
moves to list the polar bear as an endangered species.
And she has allowed big game hunters to shoot Alaska's
bears and wolves from low-flying planes.

The 44-year-old governor says a federal government
decision to protect the polar bear will cripple energy
development offshore. As a result, she is suing the
Bush administration, which ruled the polar bear is
endangered and needs protection.

The US Geological Survey says climate change has shrunk
Arctic summer sea ice to about 1.65 million sq miles,
nearly 40 per cent less than the long-term average
between 1979 and 2000.

In such a situation it was unconscionable for Governor
Palin to ignore overwhelming evidence of global
warming's threat to sea ice, says Kassie Siegel of the
Centre for Biological Diversity.

"Even the Bush administration can't deny the reality of
global warming," Ms Siegel said. "The governor is
aligning herself and the state of Alaska with the most
discredited, fringe, extreme viewpoints by denying
this."

Governor Palin would also like to bring open-cast coal
mining to Alaska's Brooks Range Mountains, an act of
environmental vandalism in the eyes of many.

The Palin administration has allowed Chevron to triple
the amount of toxic waste it pours into the waters of
Cook Inlet. This, even though the number of beluga
whales in the bay has collapsed from 1,300 to 350 - the
point of extinction - because of pollution and
increased ship traffic.

On the Republican convention floor she said: "We
Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas
and take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of
Alaska: We've got lots of both."

The fact that drilling won't solve every problem "is no
excuse to do nothing at all", she said, putting the
country on notice that "starting in January, in a
McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more
pipelines ... build more nuclear plants ... create jobs
with clean coal ... and move forward on solar, wind,
geothermal and other alternative sources".

Mrs Palin also took a swipe at Barack Obama's
environmental stance saying: "What does he actually
seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the
waters and healing the planet?"

Her support in Alaska relies on squeezing more money
for the state from the oil companies themselves. In
Alaska, every man woman and child is in line for a
bonus cheque of about $2,000 (£1,100) from the state's
massive oil wealth fund. This is, in effect, a vote-
buying machine for the would-be Vice-President.

Governor Palin wants nothing to hinder the oil
companies. She maintains that polar bears are well
managed and their population has dramatically increased
over 30 years as a result of conservation. And if the
ice should go away, then they will adapt to living on
the land.

Many oil companies abandoned Alaska when prices fell in
the 1980s but they have been rushing back to drill and
prospect areas that are among the least hospitable on
earth. That spirit of the Klondike is already in full
swing in Prudhoe Bay the epicentre of oil production
and one of the world's largest industrial complexes.
It's so big that BP, UPS and FedEx operate a special
fleet of jets from Anchorage just to service to the
region.

Hundreds of spills involving tens of thousands of
gallons of crude oil and other petroleum products occur
in the area each year. Decades-old spills are still a
problem and 17,000 acres of wildlife and marine habitat
have already been destroyed.

But Prudhoe is just a tiny fraction of the area being
targeted by Governor Palin and the oil companies. A
similar fate of environmental destruction awaits the
entire coastal plain as well as the special areas of
the western Arctic - home to migratory caribou herds,
musk oxen, wolverines, grizzly and polar bears should a
McCain-Palin administration be elected.

The oil boom has attracted oilmen from across America.
One of them is Todd Palin, husband to the vice-
presidential candidate who works for BP on Alaska's
North Slope.

It is illegal to hunt polar bears, and that is not
about to change. But in an area known as "Polar Bear
Seas", from Point Hope on Alaska's far western edge to
the pristine coastal plain of the Arctic National
Wildlife Reserve, one tenth of the world's polar bear
population is at risk, as well as beluga and bowheaded
whales and bearded and spotted seals.

Big game hunters are happy to pay lots of money to
shoot wolves and bears from the air. They also chase
them across the snow to the point of exhaustion and
then land the planes on skis, shooting them from point-
blank range. The animals are considered endangered
across the "lower 48" states of America, but not
Alaska. The hunters keep and sell the animals' pelts.

Last year, Mrs Palin proposed offering a bounty of $150
per wolf, as long as the hunter provided the wolf's
foreleg as proof of the kill. The measure did not pass.
She even spent $400,000 on a state-funded campaign to
block attempts to end the hunt.

Its not just wildlife conservationists who object. Many
ordinary Alaskans also condemn the practice as
barbaric.

Trish Rolfe, who runs the Sierra Club's Alaska office,
thinks Governor Palin has been a disaster for Alaska's
environment. "The idea that she stands up to the oil
companies is a joke," she says.

"The governor pays lip service to the issue of global
warming but denies it is man made. She will not even
spend money to help the Inupiaq villages which are
about to fall into the sea."