MN-01 : Palin Disagrees with Davis (again)

On January 9, 2008 Dr. Brian Davis sent a letter outlining his positions that he would advocate as Minnesota’s First District Congressman and recently sent a fundraising letter highlighting Governor Sarah Palin.

Although, Palin and Davis differ on taxes, the recent Vice Presidential debate reveals another important difference.

Moderator Gwen Ifel asked : "Let's talk about climate change. What is true and what is false about what we have heard, read, discussed, debated about the causes of climate change?”
Governor Palin gave a long-winding response, but here are her key comments :
PALIN: "Yes. Well, as the nation's only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it's real. I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet. But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts? [SNIP] As governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change sub-cabinet to start dealing with the impacts. We've got to reduce emissions. [SNIP] So even in dealing with climate change, it's all the more reason that we have an "all of the above" approach, tapping into alternative sources of energy and conserving fuel, conserving our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons so that we can clean up this planet and deal with climate change. ”

After Biden responded, Ifel asked : "do you support capping carbon emissions?”
PALIN: "I do. I do.”

Interesting thought process … she wants to reduce carbon emissions which begs the question : If she doesn't agree that carbon emissions contribute to climate change, than why reduce them ?

The obvious inference is that one method to ”conserving fuel, conserving our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons” is though improved mileage standards.

Dr. Davis on the other hand is quite explicit in his January letter.
“Our nation’s energy policy and economic well-being should not be based on the deeply flawed theory that carbon dioxide produced from fossil fuel combustion will lead to catastrophic climate change.”
Further, Dr. Davis states that he will advocate for “Eliminating current automobile mileage standards and government-imposed production mandates. The free market and the laws of supply and demand work much better than our government attempting to mandate conservation and setting quotas.

Governor Palin has been far from impressive, but Dr. Davis’ ideology makes Governor Palin seem that she is the one with the engineering degree.