Midterm election results find U.S. environmentalists hopeful
Whew, what a night. Environmentalists of all stripes hailed this year’s election results, though exit polls determined that Democrats were 53 percent giddier. With eco-foes like Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) defeated and green-leaning govs like Jennifer Granholm (D-Mich.) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) reseated, things are looking up. “The American people’s vision of a [different] energy future … is the winner,” said League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski, “and Big Oil is the big loser.” (Well, except in California, where voters shunned a renewable-energy oil tax endorsed by the likes of Bill Clinton and Julia Roberts.) In Nairobi, Kenya, U.N. climate conference delegates celebrated: “This is good news for climate,” said Hans Verolme of WWF, while Greenpeace’s Steve Sawyer said the results show that “the U.S. is moving substantially in the right direction and climate is very much front and center on the political agenda in the U.S.” Be still our beating hearts.
