Isreal Election Results

What the Midterm Election Results Means for the Environment ...

What do the Republican gains in Congress mean for the nations energy and environment policy? The fate of US environmental policy is tied to the fate of President Obama.

If the next two years are anything like the past two years, Republicans will resist the President’s agenda on energy and the environment.

In the absence of a working legislature, many will look to regulation as a viable avenue to advance the environmental agenda. However, the Tea Party candidates fiercely oppose government regulation and some Republicans have made it clear that they will do everything they can to limit the power of government agencies like the EPA.

Republican control of the House of Representatives means that through annual agency funding bills, they can restrict the funding required to administer regulations. This includes the EPA’s efforts to regulate CO2, ozone and other elements of the Clean Air Act.

Republicans also want the EPA to justify the costs associated with regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Some Republicans even want to reduce regulations governing the use of leaded aviation fuels, or airborne mercury pollution.

Although the new Republican Congress may want to expand nuclear power and offshore oil drilling, they also want to avoid passing any legislation that President Obama can claim as an accomplishment in 2012.

Republicans may choose to spend the next two years deriding the President and the Democrats. Tea Party Republicans can be expected to bolster the Republicans’ anti-science stance on climate change and many of the new Republicans reflexively oppose the President.

Although the new Congress will not be installed until next January, some Republican leaders have already started gathering evidence for sweeping investigations of the President’s environmental agenda. Congressional committees will be turned into investigating committees and members of the Obama administration can expect to be called into hearings.

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