By Ron Meador, media relations director, Fresh Energy

Minnesota’s sales-tax amendment was one among several green-minded ballot measures around the country that won approval in Tuesday’s elections. There was good news in Missouri, where a clean energy standard was adopted by a nearly 2-1 margin; in California and Washington, whose citizens  approved new investments in rail transit; and in Florida, which now has new tax incentives for protecting undeveloped private land through conservation easements.

San Franciscans rejected a renewable energy requirement, meanwhile, and Coloradans turned down a measure to finance natural resource protection through higher severance taxes on oil and gas. As usual, Grist Magazine offers a good summary of the issues and results at http://grist.org/feature/2008/11/03/election/index3.html, and a more comprehensive survey is available at Ballotpedia.org.

As a sobering reminder that not everything changed on Election Day, The New York Times reminded its readers in an editorial Tuesday morning that the Bush administration has signaled that it will use its last 10 weeks in office to continue weakening clean-air protections and clean-water protections, while expanding opportunities for oil and gas drilling on pristine public lands: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/opinion/04tue1.html.

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