Analyzing Palin's Logic

Yesterday, Sarah Palin- one time VP candidate, half time governor, full-time "mama grizzly"- posted a note on her Facebook page, blaming "extreme enviros" for the BP oil spill and claiming that drilling in places like the protected ANWR would have prevented such a disaster. Because some 7,000+ people (at the time of this writing) clicked that they "liked" Palin's post, I think it's important to go through the major portions of it and look at the claims being made.

Palin writes:

This is a message to extreme “environmentalists” who hypocritically protest domestic energy production offshore and onshore. There is nothing “clean and green” about your efforts. Look, here’s the deal: when you lock up our land, you outsource jobs and opportunity away from America and into foreign countries that are making us beholden to them. Some of these countries don’t like America. Some of these countries don’t care for planet earth like we do – as evidenced by our stricter environmental standards.

First, environmentalists don't protest domestic energy production offshore and onshore, they protest drilling for oil offshore (because of the fear of exactly what's happening) and onshore in certain special wildlife sanctuaries. There are, surprisingly, other means of "energy production" that don't even involve oil- wind, solar, hydrogen fuel cells, etc.- and environmentalists all for those right here in America.

With your nonsensical efforts to lock up safer drilling areas, all you’re doing is outsourcing energy development, which makes us more controlled by foreign countries, less safe, and less prosperous on a dirtier planet. Your hypocrisy is showing. You’re not preventing environmental hazards; you’re outsourcing them and making drilling more dangerous.

Really? Nonsensical? The point is to keep certain areas safe from environmental disasters. Say what you will about the likelihood of such a catastrophe vs. the benefit of domestic oil, it certainly makes some sense. Also, what makes Palin and others believe that by opening domestic drilling cites, foreign countries won't still be used for oil as well? Oil companies don't care if we're dependent on foreign oil, just that we're dependent on oil. There's no set number of drilling cites that can be active at any one time, and opening up more cites doesn't mean companies will close down others to drill at home, they'll just drill in both places and make higher profits.

Radical environmentalists: you are damaging the planet with your efforts to lock up safer drilling areas. There’s nothing clean and green about your misguided, nonsensical radicalism, and Americans are on to you as we question your true motives.

Honestly, let's be fair here. Environmentalists concerned about drilling disasters are not the following: "radical"- they have been proven to be correct through the BP spill and because shallow-water drilling has also led to disasters which is why the ban was put in place to begin with; "damaging the planet"- oil companies who screw up or do their jobs negligently are doing that, not the people who want to protect wildlife; un-clean and un-green- once again, simply because an oil driller has done his job improperly does not mean it's the fault of environmentalists who worked to bar him from screwing up in wildlife refuges. There are options outside of drilling in ANWR, shallow coasts and deep water- we've been getting our oil elsewhere (including on-land American drilling cites) for years.

This type of rhetoric goes over big with the folks who need a mantra to chant and a "tough lady" to follow, but it simply has no base in logic. Oil disasters are caused either by fluke accidents or, more often, by human error and negligence in drilling. I understand Palin has an affinity for oil companies, but there comes a time when even the poor, battered, defenseless corporation deserves to take responsibility for its actions.