Political Rant

With the Republican National Convention underway and the vice presidential candidate chosen, I was intrigued by McCains selection. My initial opinion of Palin candidacy is it's a ploy to attract uninformed women voters who will vote for a woman just to have a female in a high political office. After Palin's acceptance speech Wednesday evening, I still hold true to my initial thoughts but add that Americans love "the beautiful people" and she looked good up on the stage in front of the cameras and thousands of adoring devotees. Her speech was exactly what the Republicans wanted and needed from Palin that night; it was empowering to the conservatives.

However, since I am not a conservative, I found her speech appalling on the issue that matters most to me, the environment. The McCain Energy Plan focuses on completion of the Alaskan pipeline and further dependency on petroleum, while the future of energy is in renewable resources. In Palin's speech, she reinforced the McCain energy plan by saying "Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines ... build more new-clear plants ... create jobs with clean coal ... and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources". This statement seriously aggravates me; laying of more pipelines is not the answer to the current petroleum crisis, only severing the dependence on oil will end the crisis.

One way of reducing our dependence on petroleum is to mandate that all vehicles built in the United States to be able to run on flex fuel. It is easy to adapt any vehicle to run E85. Gasoline made with ethanol is better for the bank account and the environment. The Obama energy plan states by the end of his first term, all new vehicles made in the US will be flex fuel capable. Obama will also work towards including other forms of synthetic petroleum into the national supply. The Obama energy plan includes 10% of the nations energy consumption to supplied by renewable and sustainable resources by 2012. This attitude towards the energy and the environment is exactly the kind of leader this country deserves after eight years of Bush.

Both energy plans call for the completion of the Alaskan pipeline. I do not support the construction of the pipeline running through the Alaskan territory since it will destroy the delicate environment that our future depends on. I read yesterday that an ice shelf in Canada the size of Manhattan broke off. After learning this, I cannot understand how people still believe the pipeline to be worth the risks. But no matter the outcome in November, the pipeline is being built and future generations will pay the consequences.