Climate change bill: How Congress could fail us all, even if it passes health care

While the planet's environmental apocalypse may not be much much nigh than it was last month, this year's Election Day bore grim tidings for voters concerned with climate change. By electing public officials whose tendency on this issue is inaction, we may tipped the climate ever so slightly in the direction of the doomsday scenario -- a realm of irreversible ecological change that scientists have long warned about.

One battlefield was New Jersey, which elected Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie, a U.S. attorney, over hapless Democratic incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine. Another was Virginia, which elected former state Attorney General Bob McDonnell over his Democratic challenger, Creigh Deeds. Christie vowed, if elected, to make trouble for the Environmental Protection Agency, while McDonnell revealed his own radical views denying climate change, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its existence. McDonnell's denial of global warming also puts him at odds with the most prominent members of the Republican party, who acknowledge climate change as fact: