So how about this Spitzer business, huh? So much to say, so much humor to mine, so little of it related to the environment in any way … days like these, I envy Wonkette.
Ah well, here’s an attempt at something reasonably serious.
Spitzer was an environmental crusader as AG. Stealing Amanda’s links and verbiage:
As New York’s attorney general, he’s sued the Bush administration numerous times over environmental issues, including greenhouse-gas emissions, mercury pollution from power plants, pesticide use in public housing, and efficiency standards for appliances.
Spitzer has taken plenty of polluters to court, too. Among his many victories, he forced six New York power plants to radically cut emissions that cause acid rain and smog, achieving reductions equivalent to removing 2.5 million cars from the road. He was also the first AG to sue operators of coal-fired power plants in other states, arguing that their pollution blows into New York and contaminates the air breathed by his constituents.
(His successor, Andrew Cuomo, is no slouch either.)
In one of his first big speeches in the gubernatorial race, he laid out ambitious green plans for NY. Sadly, all he really got accomplished before the whole whoring thing was, um, greening the governor’s mansion. Wo0t! Wonder how many offsets he could have gotten for $4300 an hour?
His successor, Lt. Gov. David Paterson, would be the the U.S.’s fourth black governor and, rather randomly, its first legally blind governor. (Guess he won’t be ogling hookers!) (I take that previous highly offensive aside back!)
A modicum of looking around turns up nothing about Paterson’s green inclinations, so that’s a big wait-and-see. My guess is that anybody in the governor’s mansion in New York, unfaithful whoremongering bastard or not, will be pushed in a green direction. After all, 75% of New Yorkers already thought Spitzer should be doing more along those lines.
Perhaps Spitzer can spend some time in the political wilderness and return in a few years as the pure-hearted crusader he always purported to be, kind of like Al Gore, if Al Gore had slept with a bunch of high-priced hookers.
