Rand Paul is just one of our newly-elected headaches. It’s going to be tougher than ever to stop climate change based on the results of the midterm elections. First the good news: California reelected Barbara Boxer, the head of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. We really need her to fight for us in the Senate due to the Republican obstructionists like Jim Inhofe. Also, Jerry Brown won the governorship in California, presumably preserving the environmental headway they have accomplished there already. And from DemNow! some good news too.

California Voters Maintain Clear Air Rules

Voters also decided on 160 ballot initiatives nationwide. Two of the most closely watched measures were in California. Voters there defeated Prop 19, which would have legalized recreational marijuana use. In a rebuke of major oil companies, voters rejected Prop 23, a measure that would have suspended implementation of the state’s 2006 groundbreaking clean air legislation that requires greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020. South Dakota also rejected a measure to legalize medical marijuana. Meanwhile, Oklahoma voters approved measures to ban the use of international law in state courts and allow opt-outs from President Obama’s healthcare reform bill.

In addition, the progressive Democratic Mark Dayton was elected as Minnesota governor, but he will go through a recount process because the vote was so close.  Mark Dayton is a green in the sense that he believes in the science and is committed to reducing pollution, supporting renewable energy, and doing what we can to mitigate climate change.  In that regard, the new governors of California, Minnesota, and other states can now work together to do what states can do what they can for the climate and energy.  If cap and trade was dead before, it’s even deader now that Republicans will be controlling Congress.  That means we will need state governments to step up and do what can be done about climate change now without waiting for conferences and legislation from Congress.  California and Minnesota can potentially be real leaders in fighthing climate change this year and next, even with a U.S. Congress succumbing to gridlock. 

The bad news is that so many climate change deniers were elected or relected.  Michele Bachmann was reelected to Congress from Minnesota, and she is a notorious, relentless climate change denier. She doesn’t even think it’s happening, much less being caused by human activity. She is joined by other Republicans in the Congress and Senate, people like Rand Paul.  Paul might not be as extremist and outrageous as Bachmann, but he does not think the government has any right to control greenhouse gas emissions.  That kind of thought would doom the human  race to extinction if it’s allowed to prevail, so we’ll be looking for ways around these people as much as possible in the next two years.  This is the good news.

There are plenty of gloomy predictions now that Republicans are taking over the Congress.  This headline [...]