The Hook

For anyone who might dare click away from tonight's Canadian party-leaders' debate in favour of what promises to be a more entertaining exchange between U.S. vice-presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, Chris Genovali offers the following list of five things British Columbians need to know about the Alaska governor.

"A McCain-Palin administration would potentially be even worse for the planet than the Bush-Cheney debacle of the last eight years," warns Genovali, who directs the B.C.-based Raincoast Conservation Foundation.

Here's are five things Genovali thinks Canadians need to know:

Palin does not believe climate change is due to anthropogenic causes. She told CBS news anchor Katie Couric: "I'm not going to solely blame all of man's activities on changes in climate because the world's weather patterns are cyclical, and over history we have seen changes there."

Palin supports oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Alaska's off shore region. In an interview with CNBC Palin enthused how "there’s trillions of cubic feet of natural gas...that need to be tapped...known reserves of natural gas up on our North Slope."

Palin adamantly opposes putting polar bear on the endangered species list. In fact, her opposition to the listing is so vehement that under her direction Alaska is suing the United States federal government to stop it from occurring. The London Telegraph reports that the lawsuit opposes the endangered listing in part "because it would deter activities such as... oil and gas exploration and development."

Palin supports of aerial gunning of wolves and bears. She has instituted a bounty that rewards airborne shooters with $150 in cash for each left foreleg they turn in from freshly killed wolves. She defends such airborne slaughter as "managing for ungulates," which equates to increased trophy-hunting opportunities of elk and moose.

And Palin supports establishing the world's largest open pit gold and copper mine at the headwaters of the Bristol Bay watershed, which contains one of the most productive Sockeye salmon rivers in the world. The Pebble Mine complex reportedly would include the largest dam in the world, larger than Three Gorges Dam in China, to hold back the 2.5 billion tons of waste created in the mining process.

"We already have plenty of Sarah Palins in this province and country at all levels of government," Genovali said. "The only thing that separates the two is that ours tend not to frame their assault on the environment by invoking God."