Riding perhaps the same unprecedented wave of voter participation that swept Barack Obama into the Presidency, votes on clean energy statutes across the country came out in favor of the sustainability-conscious. "Greener" candidates such as Colorado's Mark Udall also had success in many regional elections as well.  But by far the most encouraging was Missouri's Proposition C, which brought a renewable energy standard to a battleground state, virtually unopposed.

Much to their own detriment, issues concerning global warming and harmful climate change have been dragged into the culture war that ravaged American politics during this election. Especially in the interior sections of the country, calls for increased production of domestic oil, and additional investments into so-called "clean coal" technology for outweighed interest in green, renewable energy.

But Missouri's Prop C, which promised an impressive array of job-creating, revenue-generating measures proved extremely popular with voters, netting over 65% of the vote. Aiming to have 2% of all energy produced by renewable sources by 2011, and 15% by 2021, the proposition wasn't simply a nod to global warming concerns, and to have such a wide margin of victory in such a tightly contested state could bode well for depoliticizing the renewable energy issue in the near future.

In San Francisco, Proposition H, which would have charged city commissioners to consider taking over the local power companies, failed as nearly 60 percent of voters opposed it.