Jeffords advocated for legislation to curb power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, while Inhofe opposes any forced limits on carbon emissions. When the Bush administration set new targets for power plant emissions that environmentalists, including Jeffords, derided as a giveaway to industry, Inhofe criticized the administration's emissions targets for being too strict.

A look at Inhofe's political donations offers a clue as to what the incoming chairman's priorities will be. According to numbers for the Center for Responsive Politics, Inhofe's top two contributors are the oil and gas and electric utility industries. His voting record reflects the policy priorities of his political donors.

Environmentalists have focused on two other committee chairmen who have poor track records on environmental protection: Incoming Budget chairman Don Nickles, R-Okla., and Energy and Resources chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M. From his new perch, Domenici is expected to lead a renewed drive to open the Arctic reserve for drilling. And many expect Nickles, another Western senator from an oil state, to use his power as budget chairman to defund conservation projects and cut staff responsible for investigating and enforcing environmental rules.

Domenici has promised to make drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a priority for his new committee. The fight over ANWR has been a symbolic focal point of the struggle between industry and conservationists for more than 20 years. Democrats, led by presidential contenders Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Lieberman, have vowed to filibuster any attempt to open the refuge for oil exploration. But Domenici has said he may try to exploit Senate rules that would allow a plan to drill in the Alaskan refuge to pass with only 51 votes. Nickles said he is exploring options to exploit that rule with Domenici.

Even with those efforts, it is unclear whether ANWR drilling would get the votes necessary to clear the Senate. The Senate lost an ANWR defender when Sen. Jean Carnahan lost her seat in Missouri, but gained a vote with the election of Mark Pryor in Arkansas. Though Republicans have picked up at least two seats in the Senate, pending the outcome of next month's Senate race in Louisiana, one of the new GOP freshmen, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, has said he will vote against plans to drill in the refuge.

One thing GOP control of the Senate virtually ensures is a dramatic cut in the budget of the EPA's enforcement division. Soon after taking office, President Bush slashed the budget, cuts which led to Schaeffer's resignation. "It became clear that Bush had little regard for the environment, and even less for enforcing the laws that protect it," he said. But the Senate was able to restore the funding to bring the division back to Clinton-era staffing levels. The Republican-controlled House approved a much smaller restoration, about half of what the Senate had proposed. The issue remains unresolved. But now that Republicans control the Senate, Schaeffer says, the push for full restoration is as good as dead.

"EPA enforcement funding is going to be critical," says Sierra Club spokesman Allen Mattison. "One of the things that industry wants is for the EPA to have no teeth. If environmental enforcement cops don't have money to enforce their investigations, polluters get off scot-free."

Mattison says that while the elections will have some impact on environmental policy, the Bush administration has had the power to make dramatic changes in environmental policy all along. "The question will be whether they read the election results as a mandate to do even more. Our fear is that they've been doing all sorts of nefarious things deep in the bowels of the bureaucracy, and that they will continue that on the legislative level."

Environmental protection seems sure to be a rallying cry for Democrats looking to challenge Bush in 2004. Within minutes of Friday's announcement, Lieberman, Kerry and Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., all released statements criticizing the new rules. Lieberman called on EPA administrator Whitman to "resign in protest" over the changes, which he called "the biggest rollback in Clean Air Act history." A New York Times/CBS News poll released Friday showed that Americans said they thought that protecting the environment was more important than producing energy, by a ratio of 2-1. That same poll showed, by a 7-1 margin, that Americans think the administration is more concerned with energy exploration than environmental protection.

Mattison found another silver lining in the fact that many of the Republicans elected this year ran as advocates of environmental protection. He points to Coleman's pledge to side with Democrats on the issue of protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "Wayne Allard, [R-Colo.], Elizabeth Dole, [R-N.C.] and John Sununu, [R-N.H.] all ran claiming to be environmentalists," Mattison notes. The League of Conservation Voters certainly didn't agree with Allard's assessment. They gave him an 8 percent score on their latest scorecard, and named him one of their "Dirty Dozen." Sununu faired slightly better, earning a score of 36. (Dole was not an elected official and thus had no LCV rating.)

Mattison continued: "The question is, are their actions going to match their words? If they do, we'll praise them to the heavens. If not, we'll be shouting from the mountain tops."

With the Senate now in GOP hands, activists can shout all they want. There just may not be anybody listening who is able, or willing, to do anything about it.

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