The changes wrought by the coming shift in power in the US Congress are becoming specific now. No other might bring more gasps of relief than when James Imhofe (OK) gives over to Barbara Boxer (CA).
Nowhere is the change starker than with Boxer’s impending chairwomanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee, where she takes the reins from a conservative Republican who thinks global warming is a hoax.
She vowed to push through global warming legislation next year, taking California’s landmark model nationwide — a move Feinstein proposed in a major speech in August in San Francisco.
Boxer, describing global warming as the challenge of this generation, rattled off the potential dire consequences from a projected 3.7-degree rise in the Earth’s temperature, including a melting of the polar ice caps and a 20-foot rise in sea levels along California’s coasts. She said she would bring “everybody to the table to come up with a sense of legislation … because time is running out.”
Foreign policy of course will finally get some oversight. Many Democratic initiatives we may find not to our liking, but some will fit our sense of the world and how to survive in it much better than those held dear by the lame-duck idiots now in charge.
We will be dramatically more multilateral and collaborative with other nations than the previous Congress,” said Lantos. “We will be more respectful of other countries’ views, not just to be civil but to work with others even when we disagree with them, such as the Chinese, who are very important for U.S. policy on all kinds of issues.”