At Least 20 Pro-Environment Challengers Unseated Brown Incumbents In The House

An e-mail from NRDC bolsters my suspicion that we've reached a point where being green is going to be good for a candidate -- regardless of party.

[C]onsider this: of the "Dirty Dozen" (the 13 members of Congress targeted by the League of Conservation Voters for the poorest environmental voting records), nine were defeated.

On the flip side, eight out of nine of the League's "Environmental Champions" won their races. Dozens of candidates -- from both parties -- who ran on forward-looking energy policies were chosen by voters. At least 20 pro-environment challengers unseated anti-environment incumbents in the House. And Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger won strong voter support by signing a Global Warming Solutions Act.

Last Tuesday may well go down as one of the greenest days in American political history.

The people have spoken. They've had it with corporate cronyism and the failed policies of nineteenth century oil barons. They want a clean energy economy that will break our dependence on oil, slow global warming, spare our natural heritage from destruction and create millions of new high-tech jobs.

NRDC notes that the changed landscape should be very good for green causes:

Speaker-elect Pelosi has promised that she'll start tackling the energy issue in her first 100 hours in office!

And you won't be seeing the same old Congressional attacks on our wildlife refuges, national forests and clean air. In fact, the new leadership has promised aggressive oversight of President Bush's Interior Department and Forest Service, which have done little but front for energy and timber companies.
Oversight, imagine that!


Gotta hold the Dems feet to the fire, but environmentalism appears to be a large, and largely-unheralded, winner in last Tuesday's election.