GreenBeat

Yesterday evening’s vice presidential debate between Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin was at times short on substance, but a few nuggets did give hints of what America’s political landscape might look like after November. One of the best exchanges of the debate came when the two were asked by the moderator, Gwen Ifill of PBS, about climate change.

Palin, responding, suggested that global warming is partially manmade, and partially natural. Biden countered that climate change is entirely manmade. But both candidates seemed in line with creating carbon caps, which will give a serious push to clean technology like solar, wind, geothermal power and electric cars by raising the cost of coal and other traditional energy sources.

This is important, because politicians to date have been somewhat shy about wholeheartedly supporting a carbon cap. And since it’s fairly easy (although not necessarily accurate) to argue that a cap could hurt the economy, it’s even more notable that the consensus is clear, given the current economic crisis. Here’s a small excerpt from the transcript (the whole thing is here), edited to show the statements together:

PALIN: … Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it’s real … 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? … 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.

IFILL: Senator, what is true and what is false about the causes?
BIDEN: Well, I think it is manmade. I think it’s clearly manmade. 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 manmade. That’s the cause. That’s why the polar icecap is melting.

IFILL: Let me clear something up, Sen. McCain has said he supports caps on carbon emissions. Sen. Obama has said he supports clean coal technology, which I don’t believe you’ve always supported.
BIDEN: I have always supported it. That’s a fact …

IFILL: We do need to keep within our two minutes. But I just wanted to ask you, do you support capping carbon emissions?
PALIN: I do. I do.

Some sparring occurred with a number of comments by Palin, not shown above, suggesting that more domestic drilling is needed. Biden, for his part, could have easily used the opportunity to push cleantech sources. However, it seems that the political hot issue is now clean coal, which was mentioned more than once. Biden was careful to show his support:

PALIN:I was surprised to hear you mention that because you had said that there isn’t anything — such a thing as clean coal. And I think you said it in a rope line, too, at one of your rallies.
BIDEN: …My record, just take a look at the record. My record for 25 years has supported clean coal technology. A comment made in a rope line was taken out of context. I was talking about exporting that technology to China so when they burn their dirty coal, it won’t be as dirty, it will be clean.

Biden is considered an intelligent, well-educated man, so it’s indeed likely that he has said, at least in private, that clean coal isn’t “real” — because, for the most part, it’s not. But at the moment, political support for it seems to be mandatory; clean coal now fills the role that corn ethanol did several years ago, before it was repeatedly debunked as a cure-all.

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Tags: people:joe biden, people:Sarah Palin