November fall-out

We'll see how many days takes for the new US Congress to become crooked. However, Myron doesn't believe they will ever become crooked enough to hire him for his services. He is desperately trying to keep his employers in the Republican party from toying with alternative greener policies that tend to be popular among human beings who rely on the environment for life-giving substances such as water, air, food, and a familiar climate.

After Representative Pombo managed to lose in the strikingly gerrymandered California's 11th Congressional District, and with it his program to promote the irreversible extinction of any species that got in the way of making an extra buck, Myron shed some tears and then started putting his spin -- or shall we say, swivel -- on the election.

His considered opinion, is that:

"Although the environmental and energy agenda will now be set by Democrats in the House, the ideological makeup of the House and the Senate on these issues has not changed as much as the magnitude of Republican losses would suggest.

"Green Republicans were replaced by green Democrats, while conservative Republicans were mostly replaced by moderate Democrats. This means, most notably, that the prospects for enacting global warming legislation in the next Congress have not been significantly increased."

Quite. It sounds like he didn't want the Republicans to win anyway. He went on to add:

"Although many green Republicans, such as Senator Chafee stressed their environmental records, it didn't seem to do them much good. It is also worth noting that groups such as the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club didn't spend any money to support their Republican allies in Congress."

Indeed. Republicans ought to know that with their incredible record, they don't get support from environmentalists when they desperately change their rhetoric to fit with the public mood. They can lie about their environmental credentials, and play down how their political masters want them to make it cheaper to pollute the water, taint the air, strip mine the forests, and do all sorts of things that are deeply unpopular with the overwhelming majority of people who are not rich enough to own said exploitable resources in the first place and would selfishly like them to be left alone.

Not to worry. Ebell has everything covered because he was also sounding the alarm bells:

these newly elected lawmakers may have little ability to affect their party's direction in Congress. "It's really hard to say whether these more moderate Democrats, as freshman, will be able to have any impact on what the Democratic agenda is."

As Nancy Pelosi and others on the extreme left of the Democratic Party take over on Capitol Hill, Ebell suspects the more conservative Democrats recently elected may find their influence is limited. Their impact could be reduced, he says, because the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate are solidly behind the radical environmentalist agenda.

Ah-ha-ha-ha! Nancy Pelosi, extreme? Clearly, anyone who is not a Republican nutjob is an extremist. Almost the whole world is squished up right at the end of Ebell's skewed political spectrum.

If you like nuclear fall-out, check out Myron's friend Iain Murray who wrote a wonderful screed yesterday:

Misguided environmental regulations, green obstructionism and the NIMBY (Not-in-my-backyard) syndrome have combined to delay the construction of desperately needed new power plants and transmission lines.

They also object to nuclear power stations because of their supposed danger, even though modern nuclear plants have an impeccable safety record. And they oppose coal-fired plants because of their alleged contribution to global warming.

Let us be clear about what that would mean. The electric power supply will be interrupted when it cannot meet demand. Lights will go out. Offices will cease to function. People will freeze or swelter. Elderly people will die. If sustained, this situation will severely damage the economy. Jobs will be lost. Health will suffer. The poor will get poorer. Flows of money from America to the developing world will shrink.

Remember, it's the stupid economy, stupid. The whole deal collapses if we don't use more electricity next year than we somehow managed to get by on last year.

Someone's put up a big list of nuclear power plants. I don't suppose he knows anything about this. Presumably, by "modern", he means so newly built it's not had time to go rusty enough to leak. What kind of idiots does he take us for?