Today, CLCV joined the national League of Conservation Voters (LCV) in releasing the 2011 National Environmental Scorecard.
The League of Conservation Voters’ 2011 National Environmental Scorecard reflects the most anti-environmental session of the U.S. House of Representatives in history, featuring unparalleled assaults on our nation’s bedrock environmental and public health safeguards.
The good news is that while the Republican-led House voted against the environment a shocking number of times, both the U.S. Senate and the Obama administration stood fast against the vast majority of these attacks. Indeed, not only did cornerstone environmental protections emerge from 2011 largely unscathed, the Obama administration also made major progress through administrative actions to protect our air and water.
CLCV CEO Warner Chabot commended those who had earned high marks on the Scorecard for holding the line against the attacks on our air, land and water:
We applaud those members of the California delegation who opposed the countless attacks on vital public health and environmental protections in 2011, such as Senators Boxer and Feinstein and several members of the House of Representatives. However, it’s deeply disappointing that members like Congressman Lungren and Congressman McClintock chose to put corporate polluters and other special interests ahead of the health and well-being of Californians. These scores will help California voters who care about our environment and our public health decide which lawmakers should be supported or defeated in the 2012 elections.
The 2011 National Environmental Scorecard includes 11 Senate and a record 35 House votes on issues ranging from public health protections to clean energy to land and wildlife conservation. The House votes included in the 2011 Scorecard are simply many of the most significant votes taken in a year that saw the House voting more than 200 times on the environment and public health.
In California, seven House members (Chu, Hahn, Honda, Lee, Napolitano, Roybal-Allard and Woolsey) and both Senators Boxer and Feinstein earned a perfect 100 percent score in 2011, while 13 House members (Calvert, Dreier, Gallegly, Herger, Hunter, Issa, Lungren, McCarthy, McClintock, Gary Miller, Nunes, Rohrabacher and Royce) earned particularly abysmal scores under ten percent.
How did your member of Congress perform on the environment?
According to LCV President Gene Karpinski:
In 2011, the House Republican leadership unleashed a truly breathtaking and unprecedented assault on the environment and public health, the breadth and depth of which have made the current U.S. House of Representatives the most anti-environmental in our nation’s history. LCV is grateful to those members of the California delegation and to the Obama administration for helping to ensure that the House Republican leadership did not succeed in gutting our nation’s cornerstone environmental and public health protections in 2011. We look forward to working together in 2012 and beyond to protect the planet for future generations.
The National Environmental Scorecard has rated members of Congress on environmental, public health and energy issues for 40 years. The full Scorecard can be found at www.lcv.org/scorecard.
(Note: CLCV’s 2011 California Environmental Scorecard scores the environmental performance of California’s governor and members of the Assembly and State Senate; it was released in November 2011.)
