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The governor's office said Schwarzenegger would skip a planned address to the 47th annual Capital Prayer Breakfast on Tuesday. Instead, he will appear with Republican presidential hopeful John McCain at an environmentally-themed campaign event in Santa Barbara. Organizers believe it is the first time a sitting governor has declined to address the annual gathering, although there is no official record. State Assemblyman Rick Keene has organized the breakfast for the past three years. A spokesman for the Chico Republican, Evan Oneto, said Keene was saddened when he learned the governor would be a no-show. Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said the...

Dulles, Virginia -- Bowing before the politically correct lords of the environmental movement, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared this week that when it comes to the issue of climate change, “America has to lead, and [California is] doing so with or without Washington.” Schwarzenegger was explaining his decision to ratify a two-year environmental alliance between the state of California and the People’s Republic of China under the supervision of the United Nations. Frustrated with the Bush administration’s reluctance to embrace a global climate treaty that would place caps on greenhouse gas emissions, Schwarzenegger engaged the UN and China by making...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's near-and-dear fight to make the state greener is adding a lot of new jobs to the state's already-in-the-red payroll. The governor's latest budget proposal calls for no fewer than 211 greenhouse-gas busters to be sprinkled throughout state government, at an annual cost of $55.4 million. That's 77 more greenies than are on the payroll this year. The new jobs range from $36,000-a-year accounting technicians to $102,000-a-year attorneys to draft and enforce green regulations. Fully half the money and three-fourths of the jobs would go to the California Air Resources Board, the agency charged with monitoring pollution and...

The federal government is "asleep at the wheel," California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said at a conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Friday. The Republican governor was talking about the fight between the Golden State and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which denied a waiver that would have allowed the state to enforce a law requiring lower greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles (see Will U.S. Policy Drive Green-Car Tech Away?). "They don’t get it," he said. While climate-change-fighting activities are happening around the world, he said, the U.S. government has yet to enact national climate-change legislation. "They’ve really failed in coming up...

Santa Barbara, California - Participating in a conference of green-tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, corporate executives and environmental and business journalists, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger again today explained how California's environmental policies and focus on booming clean- and green-tech industries will help the state weather a slowed-down economy. He spoke about California's wave of growth in the green technology industry during a conversation at the Wall Street Journal's ECO:nomics Conference in Santa Barbara. "California's environmental policies are driving a whole new industrial revolution in our state that is opening up huge opportunities for California companies to grow and strengthening our economy at...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once joked that Sacramento was "death," apparently doesn't want to spend many nights in the graveyard. As the Los Angeles Times reported last week, the governor has been spending nearly every night in his Brentwood mansion, shuttling between Sacramento and Southern California in his private jet. The governor uses his own money to pay for his Gulfstream flights, which price out at about $10,000 an hour, the Times reports. And what about the cost to the environment? The governor's staff says he purchases "carbon credits." Such credits are aimed at offsetting the greenhouse gases generated by...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once joked that Sacramento was "death," apparently doesn't want to spend many nights in the graveyard. As the Los Angeles Times reported last week, the governor has been spending nearly every night in his Brentwood mansion, shuttling between Sacramento and Southern California in his private jet. The governor uses his own money to pay for his Gulfstream flights, which price out at about $10,000 an hour, the Times reports. And what about the cost to the environment? The governor's staff says he purchases "carbon credits."

California's landmark legislation to fight global warming has been on the books for more than a year, but it still lacks stable, long-term funding to help meet its ambitious goal to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest budget proposal calls for a stopgap, two-year effort that relies on borrowing money from a state beverage container recycling fund to run the program. On Monday, members of a joint legislative committee raised questions about funding for AB32, the high-profile measure that seeks to cut the state's carbon emissions by about a third by 2020. "Borrowing from (the recycling fund) ......

(CNN) -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to sue the federal government over its decision not to allow a California plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, he announced Thursday. Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson announced the decision Wednesday, refusing the state's request for a waiver that would have allowed it to cut emissions faster than a new federal plan the president signed into law Wednesday. "It's another example of the administration's failure to treat global warming with the seriousness that it actually demands," the governor said at a news conference Thursday. Bush on Thursday defended the decision of his...

Jerry Brown may have invented the so-called "canoe theory" of politics (paddle a little left, paddle a little right, end up in the center) but Arnold Schwarzenegger has probably come the closest to perfecting it. And this morning the two most recognizable faces in California government looked all the world like BFFs -- best (environmental) friends forever. The attorney general and the governor were there to announce the long-expected filing of a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for inaction on California's request to regulate auto emissions. For almost two years, the agency has been sitting on California's request...

Speech was given on October 12, 2007 in Newport Beach. You have extended me a very dangerous invitation tonight – to speak to a gathering of political conservatives on the day that Al Gore has received the Nobel Peace Prize for discovering that the earth’s climate is changing. I’ve heard that he’s going to contribute half of his prize money to environmental causes and use the other half to pay his electricity bill. And anything left over will come in handy to help pay for the fleet of private jets that allow him to travel around the world to tell...

Most of them didn't endorse Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor, and they clash with him occasionally on issues ranging from smog to logging. But environmental groups said Monday they are surprisingly pleased with the number of environmental bills Schwarzenegger signed ... Of the Sierra Club's list of 25 priority bills, Schwarzenegger signed 18 - or 72 percent - the highest ... since he took office. "It is important that he is signing more environmental bills and across a variety of subjects," said Bill Allayaud, the Sierra Club's state legislative director. "The environment did well this year." Working until nearly midnight Sunday,...

<p>Environmentalists and industry officials alike are holding their breath, waiting for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to act on a stack of environmental bills in the next few days that would do everything from require green building standards on new homes and commercial buildings to banning a controversial type of chemicals in children's toys.</p>

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's efforts to make California a model for greener environmental policies will soon expand to a global stage when he meets with world leaders at a United Nations conference in September. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday invited the governor to the high-level meeting on global warming after the pair toured Echelon Corp., a San Jose-based company that provides energy-efficient networking technologies for residential, commercial, and public electrical equipment. Schwarzenegger accepted the invitation without hesitation at a news conference where the two dignitaries briefly discussed their shared commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption. "Global...

"GOING green" is all the rage among the political class, which is ever eager to look good by jumping aboard the latest craze. But much of what passes for "green" in Sacramento is just a lot of self-righteous posturing - and outrageous waste. Take Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's expensive program to convert the state's massive fleet of cars to "flex fuel" vehicles that can run on alternative fuels. The key word is can - technically, the 1,138 new cars and trucks the Schwarzenegger administration has purchased can run on ethanol. But in reality, they don't. They never have. They run on...

Greener governor seen as rootlessHis inconsistencies on environment befuddle activists. By Kevin Yamamura - Bee Capitol Bureau Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, April 15, 2007 In the latest issue of Outside magazine, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wears an untucked green shirt and jeans, posing as a champion of the environment. He sits on a rock surrounded by a squirrel, rabbit and other creatures of the forest. All while wearing his trademark boots made of dead animal skins. Schwarzenegger has suddenly become an international global warming hero, albeit one with a penchant for Hummers and alligator boots. California environmentalists still aren't entirely...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Thursday that the U.S. and other countries should enter into a new international greenhouse gas reduction pact similar to the Kyoto Protocol that President Bush has opposed and the U.S. has never ratified. Schwarzenegger, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said he supports an idea by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to bring all of the Kyoto holdouts into a new worldwide agreement to lower greenhouse gas emissions. "I think the problem is getting so serious now that those countries have to participate, everyone has to participate," Schwarzenegger said. "Including China, including...

WASHINGTON -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday told American automobile companies to "get off your butt" to promote cleaner technologies and said international trade sanctions may be needed to protect the global environment. Declaring that California "is sending the world a message" in leading the fight on global warming, Schwarzenegger made his remarks as the featured speaker for a Global Environmental Leadership Conference at Georgetown University. He is getting national attention -- appearing on the cover of Newsweek magazine this week -- for California's efforts to roll back greenhouse gases by 25 percent by 2020. "In California, we are doing...

WASHINGTON -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger boasted Wednesday that California's leadership is making environmentalism hip, sexy and mainstream, no longer just a guilt-driven movement for "tree-huggers" and "fanatics." "Environmentalists were no fun. They were like prohibitionists at the fraternity party," the moderate Republican governor told a student audience at Georgetown University, part of an East Coast swing to promote his increasingly enthusiastic embrace of the environment. "Successful movements are built on passion. They aren't built on guilt," he said, predicting that environmentalism was reaching a "tipping point" where it will move into the mainstream. "I don't know when the tipping point...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, speaking at Georgetown University, gave one of his more engaging speeches today about the environment. The lecture, sponsored by Newsweek magazine, focused on the green revolution sweeping the United States. The speech was classic Schwarzenegger: all about forward movement and staying positive. Once, he said, environmentalists "were no fun. They were like prohibitionists at the fraternity party." But things have changed, he said, and environmentalism is part of the Establishment, with critical mass and confidence. Schwarzenegger said "for too long the environmental movement has been powered by guilt. But I believe this is about to switch over...