Why? Because the results make it less likely that any legislation will be passed to help stop Hotcoldwetdry
(National Geographic) In the green hills and gray hollows of Kentucky’s well-mined mountains, the economy of extracting coal from the fuel-rich ground isn’t what it once was.
Yet Mitch McConnell, a longtime senator poised to become majority leader of the U.S. Senate in a Congress that will be fully controlled by his Republican Party come January, has found political fortune in those hills. He successfully campaigned for reelection there with warnings about a “war on coal” he accuses Democratic President Barack Obama of waging. This helps explain what the United States won’t be doing about global warming in the near future. (Read more about how the midterm election results may intensify the battle over clean energy.)
An alignment of the newly empowered McConnell and fellow Republican leaders—who either openly doubt scientists’ findings that human industry has heated the planet, or contend that curbing carbon emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere isn’t worth the potential cost of lost jobs—is likely to create the most hostile political environment ever for addressing climate change in Washington.
Let’s hope so. Interestingly, Democrats failed to pass any meaningful “climate change” legislation when they had complete control of Congress during Obama’s first two years.
At the end of the day, as has been noted many times, on the list of issues that concern Americans climate change comes in last or next to last. If it even makes the list.
I would like to see the GOP take up the issue of investing more in research and development into alternatives, to make them better. The method from Dems was to just give away money, some of which was supposed to be paid back, but rarely was, to companies that slapped up wind turbines and solar farms. A good chunk of those failed, and provided few jobs. The return on investment was negligible. The power is expensive, and power output is low compared to nuclear, coal, gas, and natural gas. We really need the next generation wind and solar. Also, a better battery for storage.
