so obviously we have the arrival of environment based political parties, but do you reckon there are any other effects?

Obviously politicians will go with what their voters want because they want to be reelected. Even if the majority of Americans are concerned about the "global warming crisis" most of them- excluding the hardcore tree huggers- won't do anything about it. They expect the government to fix it and it will go away. The fact is that Americans will be too complacent with their lives and too lazy to start to fix the environment, just expecting their "leaders" to do it for them, while their leaders just want to get voted back into office. I think it's a vicious cycle and the younger and more motiviated generation of people should eventually take over and put plans into motion that will actually work.

I think politicians are elected to uphold what their constituents want. I think the majority of Americans are concerned about global warming, what it means for our planet, and would actually like some nice places to look at for their kids. Not to mention, pollution is extremeley toxic. Why do we have so many health problems now? A lot probably has to do with what we put into our environments that are synthetic.

The gov't is finally responding to what the people want. Democracy is based on normal people, and once we sound the alarm loud enough, gov't and policy will respond. But they should think about doing that faster!

I'm glad Obama has chosen some world renowned scientists to lead the fight and I think we need to enforce some stronger gov't regulations in order to stop this over indulgence and excess.

What do you guys think about Obama's picks?

The more the population takes notice of the environment and environmental issues the more it becomes mainstream politics and policy. Media coverage of environmental issues has exoploded within the last 5 years. Every day on the news there is pretty much a story or article concerning the environment. Politicians are essentially band-wagoners, if the issue is important to the voters then the candidates will be forced to deal with the issue. The more press and support the more politicians will be force to deal with the issue.

Look at the current Obama strategy to recover from the economic downturn, a large part of his stimulus package revolves aroun creating a new green industry, this will supply green energy, create thousand of new construction jobs to implement green power stations and other environmental projects. Obama is also hoping to start a surge in green technologies which will provide thousands of new white-collar jobs.

Not only will this push green issues into the limelight once our economy depends upon them but it will also have the added advantage of helping to tackle global warming in one of the world's most polluting countries

I think that the enviroment is a big part in the governmental perspective. There is a huge group of enviromental people out there, the group just keeps growing. So yes the Gouverment is going to go with the majority.
Very good question