The Wonk Room

The Prepared Text For Sarah Palin’s Love Letter To Big Oil [Updated]

UPDATE: At Climate Progress, Joe Romm notes that Palin’s prepared remarks make it unambiguous that McCain won’t regulate global warming pollution.

UPDATE II: We’ve updated the text with her speech as delivered. Jed Lewison notes one of her more amusing revisions. Gristmill’s David Roberts calls the speech “bizarre.” Ana Marie Cox describes the travails of the teleprompter operator.

UPDATE III: Former vice president Al Gore will be delivering a true energy policy speech tonight, in a live webcast at 8:30 PM as part of the Energy Action Coalition’s Power Vote campaign for youth climate activism.

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) just completed a “major” speech on energy policy, in which she offered no new policy, nor recognized the existence of global warming. She delivered her speech at the headquarters of the Xunlight Corporation in Toledo, Ohio, a producer of flexible thin-film photovoltaic solar panels — despite her earlier mockery of such technology:

Alternative-energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop.

This hypocritical choice is just following the lead of her running mate. In May, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) delivered a speech on global warming at the U.S. headquarters of a Danish wind turbine manufacturer, after decades of opposition to the domestic renewable energy industry.

Below is the text of her prepared remarks — a half-hour love letter to Big Oil. Please note, however, that Palin went off-script repeatedly, throwing in such catchphrases from the campaign as “Drill, baby, drill,” “He’s got the scars to prove it,” “Maverick of the Senate,” and several digs at journalists.

UPDATE: Palin’s off-script remarks are in red.

Thank you all very much. I appreciate the hospitality of Xunlight Energy, and all the people of Toledo. The folks at Xunlight are doing great work for this community and our country. I’m so excited about this, Thank you for your hospitality, again doctor, thank you. Good, good things being said about this corporation as you’re progressing with the solar panels and understanding alternative energy sources. So necessary as a piece of the puzzle that we’re working on. I know my state of Alaska is certainly working on this. All that we can do to put the pieces together to allow our nation to become energy secure.

Every day, especially when there are no cameras around to draw attention to it, this company and others like it are engaged in the great enterprise of energy independence. And what we see here is just a glimpse of much bigger things to come. Solar panels, here, solar energy being tapped into it power is one of many alternative energy sources that is changing our economy for the better. And one day these sources they will are gonna change our economy forever.

All who work in pursuit of new and clean energy sources understand that America’s energy problems do not go away when oil and gasoline prices fall, as they have in recent weeks. Oil today is running about 64 dollars a barrel — less than half of what it was just a couple of months ago. And though this sudden drop in prices sure makes a difference for all of our families and our pocketbooks and for our local communities’ budgets and our state budgets across America, the dangers still of our dependence on foreign oil are is just as real as it was they were before this decline in oil and gas prices. It is just as great a threat.

The price of oil is declining largely because of the market’s expectation of a broad recession that would lower demand. And that’s not a good indicator, perhaps This is hardly a good sign of things to come, and it should only though add to our sense of urgency in gaining energy independence. When our economy recovers, and growth once again creates new demand, as it will we could run into the same brick wall of rising oil and gasoline prices — and now is the time to make sure that that doesn’t happen. We have an opportunity right now seizing this moment with lower prices to really start tapping into some technology that will allow our nation to be put firmly on that path to energy independence In Washington, we can view this period of lower oil prices as just one more chance to make excuses embracing status quo, really doing nothing about it on the energy security problem that we face and I think — and on the problem of energy security, we’ve heard enough excuses and we’ve been lax for too long. Or we can view it as an this opportunity as the time to finally confront the problem. And John McCain and I are so committed to confronting and fixing the problem we face with the reliance on foreign energy. [Applause.] Yes.

In reality, volatile oil prices are just the most immediate consequence when foreign powers control our energy supplies. They‘are an economic symptom of a strategic problem. And prices will only stabilize only when we have reached that the great goal of energy security for America.

Achieving this objective will require a clean break not just from the energy policies of the current administration, but we’ve gotta go back and realize that it’s been from thirty years’ worth of failed energy pruh, um, policies in Washington. Thirty years! where we’ve had opportunities to become less reliant on foreign sources, and thirty years of failure in that area. As in other challenges that confront our nation, we must shape events, and not simply manage crisis crises. Let’s look back in history, and realize and learn from mistakes made in the past. We have the luxury of doing that now. Instead of assuming we have to just manage crisis from Washington D.C., let’s be proactive and take an opportunity like we have today to confront a problem and fix a problem. We must steer far clear of the errors and false assumptions that have marked the energy policies of nearly twenty Congresses and seven presidents. Some tasks will be the work of decades, and some just the work of years. And they all will begin in the next term of the our next president.

It all begins on November 4th. Our country’s going to go one of two ways with energy policy, with getting us towards energy security, relying on the domestic solutions in front of us, or relying on more and more foreign sources of energy. November 4th is that time of choosing. We’re going to go one of two ways.

For our part, John McCain and I are we’re determined to set this country firmly on a path toward energy independence. America has the resources to achieve this vital goal. We certainly have the ingenuity. And if John McCain and I, if we are elected, we will supply the political will to finally to get it this done.

In my experiences in Alaska, I have seen what American ingenuity can achieve if given a chance. As governor of a huge energy-producing state, and as chair of our state’s oil and gas conservation commission, and as chairman of the nation’s Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, I’ve also seen how political pressures, and special interests, and corporate abuses though can work against the clear public interest in expanding our domestic energy supplies. I’ve had to take on some of that. Especially there in Alaska, taking on a good ol’ boy network that had been too controlled by some of those interests. Alaska is the one of the most resource-rich places on earth. Yet for many years, our state’s oil and gas wealth was the carefully guarded preserve of the political establishment — the good ol’ boys network — and it was rewarded by a few big oil companies and through an oil services company that liked things just the way that they were. They didn’t want any shakin’ up. They didn’t want anybody to come in and disrupt the good things that they had goin’ there. But it was to the public’s detriment, what was goin’ on. And, As you may have seen in the news this week, Alaska’s senior senator is not the first man to discover the hazards of getting too close to oiled, moneyed interests with agendas of their own.

For the people of Alaska and their representatives, it had’s been a hard enough time that we have had to persuade Congress even to authorize some of our developments. Start from the beginning our energy producing history. Trying to get authorization to construction of the our original Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline. And when Congress finally acted in 1973 to allow for that infrastructure to be built, it they approved the pipeline over the No votes of five a few senators, including a freshmen senator named Joe Biden. He kicked his career off, his political career, saying no to this piece of infrastructure up in Alaska that has safely flowed 15 billion barrels of U.S. crude into hungry U.S. markets. He started his career sayin’ no to that domestic solution, and it’s been no ever since.

For the next three decades in Alaska then, there had been talk of building the next piece of infrastructure that was so necessary to feed hungry U.S. markets. This would be a gas another pipeline to transport cleaner, greener natural gas down to the Lower 48. We have such an abundance of natural gas in Alaska. Geologists show us hundreds of trillions of cubic feet waiting to be tapped on and offshore. But that’s all it ever amounted to up in Alaska and across the U.S. for the plans for this gasline had been — talk. Everybody talked about it and planned for it and dreamed about it. There had been articles written about the need for a natural gas pipeline to feed U.S. markets since the fifties. Ever since I grew up I remember hearing about this dream for a natural gas pipeline. But all it was, was talk. And one of the main obstacles was big oil itself that wanted a pipeline, a gas pipeline even to be built only on their terms — ExxonMobil was one of the participants in that and other companies also.

They should have been competing to invest in a new means of delivering their product to market. They should have been competing for the right to tap into the hungry markets flowing our resources flowing into those hungry markets Instead, they wanted a higher and higher price than any fair competition would yield so they wouldn’t build the line. They were holding out for more billions of dollars — in public money. No one in good conscience could pay them what they wanted to build that pipegasline. And that’s how things were left, that’s how we found thingsthem when I decided to run forI became governor: there was No progress, no pipeline, no gas revenue for Alaska, no added energy security for America. because previously it had been all talk.

So we introduced when I got elected, we introduced the big oil companies and their lobbyists to a concept of something that they of them had evidently forgotten — and that’s free-market competition. They had a monopoly previously on power and on resources, and we broke it.

And The result is, finally, is progress on the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American’s history — a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence. That’s what I’ve been working on up in Alaska to help all of you to help the rest of the U.S. energy supplies safely ethically being tapped into flowing through infrastructure to feed our hungry markets. So with this gasline When the last section is laid and its valves are opened, that pipegasline will lead America one step farther away from reliance on foreign energy. [Applause.]

And That pipeline will be a lifeline — freeing us from for more U.S. debt, dependence, and the influence of foreign powers that do not have our America’s interests at heart. And it’s so important that more Americans realize what we’re up against when we consider our reliance on these foreign sources.

What we’ve done in Alaska. We’ve shaken things up in Juneauour state capital. Whatever the good ol’ boys are running these days, it’s not the State of Alaska. And that’s the kind of serious reform that we need a serious reform in Washington D.C., because the stakes for our country could not be higher. and if we do not transform and reform our government, we’re never going to get there, a secure independent nation when it comes to energy.

Energy security is one of the great questions in this election. Sometimes I I think that it’s no wonder that our opponents don’t wanna talk a whole lot about this, because they don’t get it. It doesn’t seem that they understand that we have the ingenuity and the domestic solutions right here. They don’t wanna talk about it. But It tests our ability to confront and solve hard problems in Washington, instead of constantly takin’ the easy way out and just putting‘ the problem things off for later. And it brings together so many other issues also — from the value of our pay checks to our nation’s most vital interests abroad. Americans blame Washington for doing next to nothing about our energy problems, and on that front, they are right. The American public is right when they understand that not enough has been done in D.C. to get us off the path that we’re on, put us on a better path.

Abroad, we see Russia now with designs on a vital pipeline in the Caucasuses. Wouldn’t they love to control entirely that pipeline. Its strategy there is to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon. And there, as elsewhere, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

To confront the threat that Iran too might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world’s oil supplies … or that terrorists might strike at a vital refining facilitiesy in Saudi Arabia … or to consider that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries as Hugo Chavez likes to threaten sometimes … we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas and we can do it because we have it here! God has so richly blessed our land with the supplies that we need.

And in, In the worst cases, some of the most, the world’s most oil-rich nations they are also the most oppressive societies. And whether we like it or not, the money that we pay U.S. dollars goin’ to pay for their oil only makes them more powerful and more oppressive. Oil wealth allows undemocratic governments to crush dissent and to subjugate women, to oppress the people that live in those countries. Other regimes too use it to finance terrorists, finance terrorists around the world and criminal syndicates in our own hemisphere.

By relying upon oil from the Middle East, we not only provide wealth to the sponsors of terror — but we provide high-value targets to the terrorists themselves. Across the world are these pipelines, refineries, transit routes, and terminals for the oil that we rely on. And Al Qaeda terrorists they know where theythose are.

AsAnd if all thisof that weren’t bad enough, there i‘s also of course the damage that our dependence on foreign oil inflicts on our economy. Over the years, trillions of U.S dollars have flowed out of our country, often to nations or regimes hostile to our country. Through this massive transfer of wealth, we lose hundreds of billions of dollars a year that would be much better invested in American enterprises to create American jobs.

And All of this explains why, as Senator McCain has said, energy security is not just one more issue on the candidate questionnaire. It’s much more important than that. Energy security is the sum total of so many problems that confront our nation. It demands of us that we shake off the old ways, no more embrace the status quo on this issue, we must, negotiate new hazards, and make hard choices that have long been deferred. And three decades of partisan paralysis on energy security, that is enough. I do not wanna hand this problem on to my children. Or your children. I wanna take care of it, confront it, fix the problem, we can do this. It’s time we meet this challenge in a way consistent with the character of ourthis great nation, and that starts with producing more of our own energy. [Applause.]

And In a McCain our administration, we wi‘ll authorize and support new exploration and production of America’s own oil and gas reserves — because we cannot outsource the solution to America’s energy problem. We can’t outsource that, we’ve gotta take care of this ourselves, again, we can do this. Every year, we are sending hundreds of billions of dollars out of the country for oil imports, much of it from OPEC, while America’s own oil and gas reserves in America are warehoused underground, they’re going unused. And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we’ve got lots of both. Oil, gas, we’ve got a lot of coal, also.

And As a matter of fairness, we must assure affordable fuel for America by producing more of the trillions of dollars’ worth of our oil and natural gas. OnOur land and offshore, we‘ve gotta will drill here and, we’ve gotta drill now! And that is one thing that as we travel around this nation in this campaign and we’re in these rallies you say that and it resonates because people understand then, and they start chanting “Drill, baby, drill!” They understand that we must drill here, drill now because we can do it and because of the geology of so many of the areas that they live they understand that warehoused underground are those resources.

Another essential means to energy independence is a dramatic expansion in ourthe use of nuclearnucular energy. We’ve gotta tap into that. And In a McCainour administration, we will set this nation on a course to build 45 new nucular reactors by the year 2030. That’s a lofty goal, I know. And we wi‘ll set the goal though of 100 new plants to power the homes and factories and cities of America. This has to be tapped into also.This gotta be part of the solution! This task will be as difficult as it is necessary. We wi‘ll need to recover all the knowledge and skills that have been lost over three stagnant decades in a highly technical field like nucular. We will need to solve complex problems of moving and storing materials that will always need that safeguarding. And We wi‘ll need to do all of these things, and do them right, and we have done as we have done great things before. We have to tap into American ingenuity and make sure that our young people are growing up understanding the benefits of nucular and our colleges are teaching that science also.

One of the efforts that will assist in securing our overall energy future is the development of clean-coal technology also. And here we have another big disagreement with our opponents. It was just about aLast month ago that Joe Biden told a voter in a ropeline but the media caught him on tape, he told a he told a voter that– and I quote — we’re not supporting clean coal. He says that clean coal’s it’s a good idea for China — but sorry, Ohio, he says Joe Biden says it’s not for you.

And That is’s just nonsense, and there’s plenty more of that nonsense when um you look at it in Senator Biden’s record. He’s against drilling off our coasts, he says that’s for envital environmental reasons that he’s opposed. But he says that offshore drilling holds real promise for the island nation of Cyprus — as if the environmental safeguards of the Cypriotsthere are more rigorous than our own. And so far as he and Senator Obama are concerned, nuclearnucular power’s okay, too — but only for France and other European nations. Our opponents seem to have all sorts of solutions and ideas to meetfor the energy needs of other nations — now if only they’d focus more on what America needs.

And It is’s worth asking why Senators Obama and Biden are opposed to the very same production methods in America that they advocate for other nations. Nobody seems to be asking them that. Usually, the answer that we hear gotta assume based on their record and some of their comments is that they fear environmental harm from domestic production, especially in the case of offshore drilling. But there’s a big problem here, even if we take their argument on its own terms. Technology has made production far cleaner than was once was ever thought possible tiny footprints is all that is necessary now– by use of such methods as horizontal drilling, and carbon capture and storage, and enhanced recovery. Technology has come such a long way. Again, they don’t get it. They need to understand the science behind all of this today. And those cleaner, safer technologies are far likelier to be used in the United StatesU.S. and Canada than by China, India, or other developing nations. It’s here where there where they will be produced in environmentally friendly manners and protecting the workers. Much more likely here than in these developing countries.

So policies that forego domestic production don’t protect our environment. They simply accelerate and reward dirtier and more dangerous methods of production elsewhere, in countries that apply few if any environmental or workplace safeguards. While our opponents like to posture as defenders of the environment, in practice their refusal to support more domestic production does nothing more than harm than good– it ultimately harms the environment. It doesn’t do any good.….

And As for our coal resources, let me get back to coal, America has more coal than the oil riches in all of Saudi Arabia. I don’t know if a lot of people have realized that. Burning coal cleanly is a challenge though, it’s a challenge of practical problem-solving and human ingenuity though — and we have no shortage of those in America either. So, in a McCain administration, we will commit two billion dollars each year, until 2024, to clean-coal research, and development, and deployment. We won’t just be talking about it, we’ll be doing something about it, to find the solution that we need. to reach clean coal technology that can be the technique that can be deployed. And we can live with this. We will refine the techniques and equipment. And We wi‘ll deliver not only electricity but jobs to some of the hardest hit areas hardest hit by ourthese economic timestroubles.

And in the end, with or without the green light from Joe the Six-Term Senator, we wi‘ll make clean coal a reality. And it is For the sake of our nation’s security and our prosperity, that we need Americanthese energy resources, from America. And they can be brought to you by American ingenuity, and they gotta produced by American workers. And it is To meet America’s great energy challenge, that John and I will adopt an that all of the above approach that’s needed. In our administration, that will mean harnessing alternative sources of energy, like wind and solar the great job that you are doin’ here with solar, geothermal, we have many many alternative sources that have not yet been tapped into and allowed to become economic and reliable. That’s the key of course, is the reliability of these alternative sources . We will‘ve gotta end subsidies and tariffs that drive prices up though, and provide tax credits is what we’ll do indexed to low automobile carbon emissions. and We ‘ve gotta will encourage Americans to be part of the solution too by taking steps in their everyday lives thatto conserve more and use less.
And you don’t hear a lot of talk about that also. The need for all of us to conserve these energy sources. Especially, obviously on renewable sources of energy.

And we wi‘ll control greenhouse gas emissions by giving American businesses new incentives and new rewards to seek, instead of just giving them new taxes to pay and new orders that they mustto follow, so says government.

On energy policy, our opponents are always talking about things we can, that we cannot do, because our own government won’t let us. When you look over the energy plans of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and histhe allies that they have there in Congress, it’s just a long, labored agenda of inaction. and we cannot afford this, not a day longer And it’s the same agenda of inaction that we could expect under the a one-party rule of Obama, and Pelosi, and Reid. and I say that again based on their record of inaction. [Applause]

They’re always talking about things that we can’tcannot do in America, stifling the entrepreneurial spirit with more government control saying to the American public why we can’t do something, why energy we can’t produce, and why refineries we can’t build, and why plants we can’t approve more plants, and coal why we cannot use that, technologies why we cannot master new technology. And As John McCain has observed, for a guy’s who’s slogan is Yes, we can, Barack Obama’s energy plan sure has a whole lot of No we can’t. [Applause]

And Again and again, our opponents say that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems — as if as if we all didn’t know that already. But the fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.

No, we can’tcannot drill our way out of the problem entirely. But this is America, and it’s the most resourceful country on earth, and we can drill, and refine, and mine, and enrich, and reprocess, and invent, and build, and conserve, and grow, andwe can use every available means to regain our independence. but we first have to say yes we can do it. [Applause.] Yes.

And The mission of energy security will demand great things of our country. It will require commitment, and resolve, and political courage. It will require that bipartisan approach that John McCain is known for. He is the maverick of the Senate because he’s been able to have the courage, the guts to manifest his commitment to working across the aisle to fix the problems that America has and and face the challenges. He’s known as the maverick. He’s got the scars to prove it because he takes shots from his own party and from the other party also, but it is going to take that kind of courageous, wise, experienced approach to meet America’s energy challenges. And that’s what John McCain is all about. And John McCain is a man who knows something about hard missions, and about overcoming dangers and keeping faith with his country. He has always put country first. The stakes are high, and complete success will not come quickly on this front. But I can promise you this: that Unless we begin this mission now today, the only change we’ll see is a change for the worse. And when we do succeed in the hard work ahead, our children will live a more prosperous life in a more prosperous country, and they’re gonna live in a more peaceful safer world. That’s what energy independence will bring us. [Applause.] Thank you all very much, and God bless America. So I thank you for being here today.

I’m excited about the possibilities that we have in putting together the pieces in this puzzle, putting it all together, the big picture for America. The possibilities that we have, the potential in America to finally getting our nation firmly on that path toward energy independence. In this arena also, I promise you that John McCain and I, we will not let you down.

Thank you.