Chalk one up for the environmentalists

Wildlife whupped concrete. On few topics of liberal-conservative dispute was there a "thumping" of major proportions equal to the one voters visited upon anti-environmentalists in the recent election.

The new Congress will be governed so differently on environmental issues from the current Congress that it's hard to count the ways.

The election results changed the game environmentalists have played for the past 12 years from one of defense to offense. Those who seek to push back global warming instead of blithely ignoring its encroaching presence, those who favor smart growth over unlimited sprawl, those who cherish open space, no longer need to worry nonstop about losing ground. They, instead, can start finding ways to move forward on a variety of environmental issues.

In no way will the change be more evident than among the incoming committee chairs. In the Senate, the Environment and Public Works Committee is being taken over by California Democrat Barbara Boxer, among the greatest friends the environment has ever had in Congress.

Even during the height of the Bush/Republican Congress anti-environment era, she pushed for heightening federal scrutiny of environmental toxins, so that they would be measured against how they affect children (who are much more sensitive to pollutants) than how they affect adults.

Boxer replaces Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, who likened even a feckless Environmental Protection Agency to the Nazis, calling it "a Gestapo bureaucracy." He referred to scientists warning of the dangers of global warming to "Chicken Little" types, and called the alarms about global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Could the contrast be starker? I doubt it.

On the House side, voters ousted California Republican Richard Pombo. The chairman of the House Resources Committee (so renamed by Republican revolutionaries -- it used to have "environment" in its title) lost his seat to a political novice, Democrat Jerry McNerney, who is, of all things, a wind-energy engineer. Pombo's successor as chairman, according to the Christian Science Monitor, is "longtime environmental champion Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., a leader in the effort to reform the hardrock-mining law of 1872, which left thousands of polluted sites across the West."

Grist Magazine, which covers the environment, quotes Sierra Club Political Director Cathy Duvall as saying, "Let me be clear: The environment won. ... Voters elected a greener U.S. House, a greener U.S. Senate, greener U.S. governors, and they gave a green light to a new energy future."

Environmentalists' giddiness will certainly end up being circumscribed by congressional and fiscal realities, however. Will there be limitless funding for renewable energy? Of course not.

Do opponents of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ever have to worry again about an invasion of oil rigs? "Ever" is a long time.

But certainly if the departing Republican Congress was not able to get drilling going with its array of zealots in power on the Hill and in the White House, it's certainly not going to happen until the next gang of conservative, anti-environment, pro-oil types takes charge. And the voting public seems in no mood for that to happen anytime soon.

Do environmentalists count extremists among their own number? Of course.

I recall a friend with a high-level appointment in the Clinton administration who dedicated his career to preserving open spaces. He described green lobbyists as unhappy even when they get 90 percent of what they've asked for.

The lesson of this election: Everything in moderation, even and perhaps especially "green." So smart advocates for environmental progress should be seeking terre-verte, not emerald, and taking pride in the fact that an era of forward movement seems to have begun.

Bonnie Erbe is a TV host and writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail bonnieerbe@CompuServe.com.

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