Gov. Turns Up Heat in Global Warming Fight

On the eve of the Group of 8 summit in Scotland, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger urged the United States and other nations to combat global warming and vowed in an opinion piece in London’s Independent newspaper to make California a leader in the effort.

Schwarzenegger never mentioned President Bush in the article, but his call for immediate action contrasts sharply with the administration’s recommendation of only voluntary steps to limit greenhouse gas emissions on grounds that more aggressive efforts would hurt the American economy.

“The debate is over. We know the science. We see the threat posed by changes in our climate,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “And we know the time for action is now.

“I ask citizens and governments everywhere to do their part by conserving energy, reducing the use of fossil fuels, reducing waste and taking every opportunity to work together for a cleaner, healthier tomorrow.”

His stance is yet another example of how Schwarzenegger is staking positions at odds with Bush on key issues. Schwarzenegger is a moderate Republican who favors abortion rights, opposes a proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage and believes the federal government is failing to secure the border with Mexico.

In an interview Monday, Terry Tamminen, Schwarzenegger’s primary environmental advisor, said the governor’s article reprised a speech he gave a month ago before business, political and environmental leaders at the United Nations World Environment Day conference in San Francisco.

There, Schwarzenegger signed an executive order outlining ambitious goals for reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 2010 to less than those produced in 2000. By 2050, the state would reduce the emissions to 80% below 1990 levels.

The 1990 baseline is the level countries pledged to get below as part of the Kyoto Protocol, a pact signed by almost every developed nation except the United States, the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases.

In his article Sunday in the Independent, Schwarzenegger gave examples of how his administration planned to achieve such reductions. They include accelerating the timetable to get more energy from renewable resources such as wind, solar energy, geothermal power and biomass conversion, and aggressively pursuing his proposal to have 1 million solar homes and buildings in California to save energy and reduce pollution.

The governor, who wants to increase the state’s total solar output from about 101 megawatts to 3,000 megawatts by 2018, also wrote that he aims to host a series of “conservation summits” for businesses across the state, “spreading the word that pollution reduction is good.”

The governor’s proposal is only about half as ambitious as the Kyoto targets in the short run. But some climate experts believe that if California reduces emissions by the goals Schwarzenegger has set, it would cut more greenhouse gases than Japan, France or the United Kingdom.

Tamminen insisted that the governor’s message was “solely focused on California and what it can do to solve global warming problems. He’s not looking to send messages to anyone else.”

Nonetheless, others said the article was fraught with political implications by virtue of its timing, with the summit of the Group of 8 leading industrialized nations beginning Wednesday.

Elizabeth Garrett, director of the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics, said Schwarzenegger could be trying to garner support for three measures he has embraced in California’s special election in November.

The measures would lengthen the time teachers work before receiving tenure, give the governor greater control over state spending and give the Legislature’s redistricting powers to a panel of retired judges.

“The governor’s popularity has been declining precipitously among Democrats and independents, whose votes he’ll need for his initiatives to win in November,” Garrett said.

“Writing this global warming piece is a way to remind Democrats and independents that he holds a position important to them, which diverges from the Republican Party,” she said. “In other words, he’s saying, ‘I’m not the usual Republican.’ ”

Former Democratic state Sen. Tom Hayden called that “an extreme stretch.”

“The G-8 meeting is extremely important for environmentalists, and having Schwarzenegger differ from Bush is important,” Hayden said. “But he’s been taking this environmental position for a long time. He believed in it before the initiatives.”

Barbara O’Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at Cal State Sacramento, agreed.

“I honestly think he believes in certain issues with all his being, and the environment is one of them,” O’Connor said.

In his article in the Independent, Schwarzenegger charted a course on global warming distinctly different from that of the Bush administration.

“Many people have falsely assumed that you have to choose between protecting the environment and protecting the economy,” he wrote. “Nothing could be further from the truth. In California we will do both.”