Remember the days when the Discovery Channel and it’s sister channels actually aired shows promoting nature conservation? Now the network is slipping and mostly airing crap like American Loggers and other garbage going against what they once stood for. Well Discovery is now giving Sarah Palin her own reality TV series to air on TLC. That’s like having Rush Limbaugh for a host on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
In her next move, Sarah Palin is teaming up with The Discovery Company’s TLC for a new series, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” which will take a documentary tour of her home state. We find it ironic that the notorious anti-environmentalist will be given a platform by one TV’s biggest nature-driven companies, which owns networks such as Discovery, Animal Planet and Planet Green. In that vein, we’re taking a look at some of Palin’s biggest anti-environmental stances and contrasting them with the decidedly environmentally-friendly programming put on by The Discovery Company. Take a look, and let us know which pairing you find most ridiculous.
- Palin fought hard against polar bears getting endangerment status, going so far as to sue the federal government. In a New York Times op-ed, she argued that polar bears “are worthy of our utmost efforts to protect them and their Arctic habitat. But adding polar bears to the nation’s list of endangered species, as some are now proposing, should not be part of those efforts.”
Palin also challenged the federal government over the listing of the Cook Inlet beluga whale as an endangered species, citing its interference with oil and gas development.
- The Discovery Channel is clearly aware of the polar bear’s endangered status. Finding the political debate on the matter to be “dubious,” the network urged readers to help preserve the species. This Planet Earth clip shows how melting sea ice would affect the polar bear’s ability to hunt for food.
- Palin spoke out against a ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, even calling for increased drilling and famously coining her catchphrase “Drill, baby, drill!” to the horror of environmentalists everywhere.
- Since Palin arrived on the scene, she has maintained that she’s “not one … who would attribute [climate change] to being man-made.” Palin outlined her opposition to forming climate change policy at Copenhagen in a Washington Post op-ed, again reiterating her doubts that humans have anything to do with climate change: “While we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can’t say with assurance that man’s activities cause weather changes. We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs.”
- This Discovery Channel special visited global warming hot spots across the world and brought in leading experts to discuss what is causing it, from both natural causes to the effects of industrialization over the past 150 years. This video looks at how climate change is dramatically affecting Palin’s home state of Alaska.
- Palin spent $400,000 of state money to fight hard against Measure 2, which would have banned hunting wolves from airplanes for sport. She argued that it was a necessary predator-control program to boost caribou and moose numbers, even though the practice is commonly regarded as a cruel, more painful way of killing wolves.
- This Planet Earth video illustrates that it can actually be difficult for wolves to catch caribou. The Scientific American spoke to Shawn Haskell, a wildlife biologist at the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department in Saint Johnsbury, who has studied caribou and wolf populations in Alaska.
Haskell said: If you’ve ever seen the Planet Earth videos, you’ll see a wolf chasing a three-week old caribou calf for miles on end. The little sucker can run … Moose calves have a ‘hider’ strategy. They hide in the vegetation, and that makes them susceptible to bears.
“That’s why I find it very interesting that people want to increase moose populations, but they talk about culling wolves. I’ve questioned that myself. It doesn’t have to do with science, it’s just the way it is.”
- Palin came out against Alaska’s Measure 4, a clean water initiative that aimed to protect Bristol Bay, one of the world’s most productive salmon fisheries, from the proposed Pebble Mine, which would discharge cyanide and mining waste into streams that flow into Bristol Bay.
- The Discovery Channel’s look at the life cycle of salmon emphasizes how vital clean water is to the early development of the fish.
Sarah Palin Teams Up With Discovery Company: An Unnatural Match? (PHOTOS, VIDEO) | HuffPost Impact