Agence France-Presse: Republicans’ victory in US elections has all but doomed prospects for a national plan to battle climate change, but President Barack Obama voiced hope on Wednesday of finding areas of co-operation. Leaders of the Republican Party, which swept back into the House of Representatives and made gains in the Senate, strongly opposed a bill last year to impose the first US restrictions on carbon blamed for global warming. But in one result savoured by environmentalists, voters in a California referendum…