Schwarzenegger ‘liberal' on environment
By Douglas Fischer
The Oakland Tribune
October 10, 2003
Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger's environmental platform reads like a liberal Democrat's playbook -- promoting solar power, calling for green building codes, limiting timber harvests in the Sierra Nevada and seeking more watershed preservation.
He calls for air pollution statewide to drop 50 percent by the end of this decade, for 50 percent of the state's new homes to include a solar photovoltaic system by 2005, and for a hastened effort to protect Lake Tahoe's famously blue waters
He wants California's energy consumption to drop 20 percent within two years and to accelerate a timetable requiring 20 percent of the state's total power supplies to come from renewable resources.
He also has pledged to back the Sierra Nevada Framework, a controversial federal logging plan the Bush administration is threatening to gut.
--his environmental platform was his first detailed policy position, released Sept. 5 -- less than a month after he jumped into the race