What great news for Planet Earth from south of the border!
In the leadup to the U.S. midterm elections, all the pundits were predicting a Red Wave. (I have never quite understood why the Republicans are referred to as the red party.) The Red Wave was seen as so certain that the Republicans were drooling.
Of course, this would have been a disaster on many fronts, not just for Americans but much more importantly for planet Earth – the Republicans would have taken President Joe Biden’s environmental plan, limited as it is, and thrown it away.
That would have pretty much meant saying goodbye to any possibility of saving the planet from a complete climate catastrophe.
However, as Yogi Berra famously quipped, “It ain’t over til it’s over.”
In part due to the U.S. Supreme Court reversal of Roe vs Wade; in part due to the delusional claims by many in the Republican Party that Donald Trump won the 2020 Presidential election; in part due to the 2021 January 6th insurrection and the televised hearings about it; the Democratic Party miraculously managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Well not quite a complete victory but at least a half victory.
In the 100-seat U.S. Senate race, the Democrats have won at minimum 50 seats. This gives the Democrats control of the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris the deciding vote on any tied motion. This is same total of Senate seats that Democrats had going into the election.
To possibly make matters slightly better, there will be a run-off in Georgia for the one still undecided Senate seat, as neither of the two top candidates received 50% support during the first vote. Republican Herschel Walker and the Democrat Raphael Warnock will square off on December 6th.
As an aside, I wonder how Walker is even in contention. He professes to be adamantly opposed to any abortions, even for rape or incest, and yet has paid numerous former girlfriends to have — you guessed it — abortions.
In the House of Representatives, the Democrats have lost their majority. However, the number of seats they lost in this midterm election is far fewer than those lost under any midterm President since 2006, although there are precedents before that.
The latest count as I write this blog is Republicans 218 to Democrats 2010 with 7 races remaining. This gives the Republicans only a razor thin majority.
Thankfully not all Republicans are Trumpians. Some of them, although fewer and fewer, are simply well-intentioned small-c conservatives who may be open to rational arguments.
Another factor to keep in mind is that members of the US congress from opposite parties may be open to voting together because Earmark or Pork-Barreling projects are included in bills proposed by President’s party. Earmarks and pork-barreling both involve voting funding for pet projects of legislators for their districts. Fingers crossed that Biden would have only to authorize the right amount of pork as part of his spending bills to pass needed legislation.
Coupled with Lula da Silva’s recent victory in Brazil (see my November 7th 2022 blog), things are looking better for planet Earth. But we have a long way to go if humanity is going to save itself from extinction.
Daily atmospheric CO2 [Courtesy of CO2.Earth]
Latest daily total (Nov 17, 2022): 417.37ppm
One year ago (Nov 17, 2021): 415.02ppm
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