Election Results Are a Breath of Fresh Air

Nancy Pelosi

Look for the Democratic-controlled House to restore the climate change committee that was disbanded by the Republican majority in 2011. Yippee!

Though a fortified Republican majority in the Senate will certainly block most House "green" measures from becoming law, the reborn climate panel will be a potent PR vehicle to keep global warming issues front and center in the public debate.

Panel members will be in the position to use the power of PR to increase public awareness and support for green initiatives to pressure recalcitrant Senators into action.

Presumptive Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is the person who originally launched the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. A reiteration of the select committee is sweet music for the San Francisco Congresswoman, whom president Trump (for the time being) views as somebody that he can deal with.

The reconstituted global warming panel doesn't come a moment too soon.

It arrives in the aftermath of the Oct. 8 release of a landmark United Nations report that painted a dire future for the planet due to damage on a scale that has "no documented historic precedent" unless actions are taken to reduce greenhouse gases.

From the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the report is based on more than 6,000 scientific studies and written by 91 scientists from 40 countries

And of course, the Tweeter-in-chief, the most unscientific president in US history, didn't read a word of the report though he acknowledged its receipt.

After all climate change, according to the president, is a "hoax" perpetrated by China to tangle the US manufacturing base in burdensome regulations.

In typical Trumpian fashion to cast seeds of doubt, Trump implied that he has a bunch of people on hand to dispute the findings of the UN report.

Let's go to the transcript of Oct. 9:

“It was given to me, and I want to look at who drew it. You know, which group drew it. Because I can give you reports that are fabulous, and I can give you reports that aren’t so good. But I will be looking at it. Absolutely.”

A month later, there's still no word on the president's view of the report.

There's more good election news for the environment. The new Congress also will be able to thwart future moves by Team Trump to roll back environmental safeguards.

Tieran Sittenfeld, senior VP-government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, told the Pulitzer Prize-winning website, InsideClimateNews, that the election results are a rejection of "the most anti-environmental US House of Representatives in our nation's history."

Anti-green Republicans who put "corporate polluters ahead of people and their communities" went down in defeat, according to Sittenfield.

That's indeed a breath of fresh air and a drink of cold clean water for all of us.