Here's the bad news: the "major legislation" to increase CAFE mileage to 35mpg by 2020 was actually a defeat.

The original CAFE legislation, which was included in the Safe Climate Act that was introduced in the House in July, had a requirement of 36mpg by 2020; more importantly, it had a floor of 20mpg. It was this latter requirement that got the bill bottled up in committee by the "Democrat" From the Auto Industry, John Dingell. The auto industry association put forward a substitute that had no floor but required a "40% increase" in CAFE mileage by 2025. The "compromise" Pelosi did with Dingell was to rip out the good mileage part of the Safe Climate Act, and substitute the industry bill, with a "compromise" of 2020 instead of 2025. The other good stuff of the Safe Climate Act that was put into the Energy Bill - the requirement of 20% green energy for utilities, the cap on carbon dioxide and implementation of cap-and-trade - were the parts successfully filibustered out of the bill by the Republicans.

The result was the auto industry bill was passed.

You might want to know, the next time you're in the market for a Prius, that the leader of this whole thing was Toyota of America. That's because Toyota's best seller in America is not the Prius, but the "Tundra," an oversize pick 'em up truck that gets 10 mpg! Under the "major reform," the Tundra will only have to get 14 mpg by 2020! See, every time Toyota sells one Prius, it can sell two Tundras, and still meet the CAFE requirements, and this won't be changed by the new requirements.

Of course, $100/barrel oil and $4+ gasoline will turn Tundras and all the other butt-ugy, no-taste, Republicanmobiles into the extinct dinosaurs they are long before 2020, since in addition to filling the tank, Americans also have to eat.

The good news of 2008 for the environment is that we have the potential of an election this November that does for the environment what the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt did for the economy in 1932, and an election result that lasts for at least as long as the New Deal did.

That's because something completely unprecedented in American politics has been taking place "under the radar" this past fall.

We now have 8 Republican Senators and 19 Republican Congressmen who have announced their retirement, that they are not running for re-election in 2008. There has never before been an election with this many incumbents dropping out. Usually, if you're lucky, you get one or two, if you're really lucky you get three and if it's a frickin' miracle, you get four. But we have 27, all in one party, all negative votes on anything progressive, particularly the environment.

In all but one of the senate seats, and all of the House seats, a Democrat either is projected to win or is capable of winning with a good campaign. And every one of them is a good vote on the environment.

This means a 60+ pro-environment Senate and a close-to-veto-proof House. Of course, people who are progressive on the environment are usually progressive on other issues, so this bodes very well for lots of things.

These numbers do not take into consideration the four Republican Senators who are on "the endangered species list" - Coleman in Minnesota, McConnell in Kentucky, Smith in Oregon and Chambliss in Georgia - or the twelve other Republican house seats that polls show are "up for grabs."

Forget who the President is, if we get these victories locally we can rule nationally regardless of who is in the White House. This will be particularly important if the winner is Triangulatin' Tilly, since she's going to have to be kept on The Path of Goodness the way one keeps a mule at work, so she and Bozo don't sell the family silver to the corporations.

But the bottom line here is: we can have the greenest Congress in history. The logjam can be broken and the Republicans consigned to meeting in a closet with room left over. It is entirely achievable, and no one in Left Blogistan seems to be paying atttention to this fact.