Poop Shute

Mass Debatin'

Governor Palin: [on climate change] 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?

Joe Biden: If you don't understand what the cause is, it's virtually impossible to come up with a solution. We know what the cause is. The cause is man-made. That's the cause. That's why the polar icecap is melting.

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Close, Joe. You were sooOOooo close. Palin said this same waffling, non-committal bvllshit to Katie Couric, but Katie managed to call her out on it a little better:

Palin: You know … there are man’s activities that can be contributed to … the issues that we’re dealing with now with these impacts. I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate. Because the world’s weather patterns … are cyclical. And over history we have seen changes there. But kind of doesn’t matter at this point, as we debate what caused it. The point is it’s real, we need to do something about it. And like … Tony Blair had said … when he was in leadership position, he said, “Let’s all consider the fact that it is real.” So instead of pointing fingers … at different sides of the argument as to who is to blame, and if nature just to blame, let’s do something about it. Let’s clean up our world. Let’s reduce emissions. And let’s go with reality.

Couric: Because, if it’s not man-made, then one might wonder, well, how can human beings contribute to a solution?

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EXACTLY, Katie!

The governor is trying to not offend either side of the argument by giving no opinion about where the problem starts, but by taking that position (or lack of one) she renders anything else she says on the matter irrelevant.

If your initial argument is "the earth's weather patterns are cyclical, and man could never have a significant impact on such a massive system" then the cause is out of our hands, isn't it? You cannot follow up that argument by saying "BUT it's clear that it IS changing and we have to fix it." Those two concepts are completely incompatible. If we aren't powerful enough to cause it, how could we be powerful enough to reverse it? If it is simply "cyclical" and it's just the earth doing it's thing, then it's IMPOSSIBLE for us to fix it.

So, Sarah, allow me to be one of the many people to publicly inform you that yes, the cause DOES matter. Without first admitting that we caused this, and defining exactly HOW we caused it, we can never fix it.