And Then There Was One

[cal04]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/opinion/03friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

As we emerge from Labor Day, college students are gathering back on campuses not only to start the fall semester, but also, in some cases, to vote for the first time in a presidential election. There is no bigger issue on campuses these days than environment/energy. Going into this election, I thought that — for the first time — we would have a choice between two “green” candidates. That view is no longer operative — and college students (and everyone else) need to understand that.

With his choice of Sarah Palin — the Alaska governor who has advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and does not believe mankind is playing any role in climate change — for vice president, John McCain has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.

Given the fact that Senator McCain deliberately avoided voting on all eight attempts to pass a bill extending the vital tax credits and production subsidies to expand our wind and solar industries, and given his support for lowering the gasoline tax in a reckless giveaway that would only promote more gasoline consumption and intensify our addiction to oil, and given his desire to make more oil-drilling, not innovation around renewable energy, the centerpiece of his energy policy — in an effort to mislead voters that support for drilling today would translate into lower prices at the pump today — McCain has forfeited any claim to be a green candidate.

So please, students, when McCain comes to your campus and flashes a few posters of wind turbines and solar panels, ask him why he has been AWOL when it came to Congress supporting these new technologies.

“Back in June, the Republican Party had a round-up,” said Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club. “One of the unbranded cattle — a wizened old maverick name John McCain — finally got roped. Then they branded him with a big ‘Lazy O’ — George Bush’s brand, where the O stands for oil. No more maverick.

[newtothegame]

1. Good read n/t

[northernlights]

2. my chemistry professor

didn't exactly tell us who to vote for in lecture today.

Just threaded the environment throughout her lecture, and how Maine helped bring about the ban on DDT.

And in the part about how politics influences scientific research, worked in stem cell research and how this admin banned federal funding for it, but of course it's done everywhere else in the world.

And how important our choices are when we vote. It didn't take a lot of reading between the lines!

[psychmommy]

3. good professor

college made me more politically aware. i became curious, now i am rabid. enjoy college, they were the best years of my young life. now watching my kid grow up and politics are my life.