Uh huh....
Posted on 06/12/2006 10:04:53 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke yesterday at the annual conference of the Western Governors Association in Sedona, Arizona, where he pushed three resolutions on alternative energy and global warming. “We should fundamentally change our approach to energy,” he declared. “We've all seen the pictures of melting glaciers. We know the dangers of climate change. How the oceans are getting warmer, how they're rising. How agriculture can be threatened.”
"We are long past the time when we can just talk about this problem," said the former action superstar, who is being challenged for re-election by Democrat Phil Angelides. "We must take action." The bipartisan body, which comprises the governors of 18 states and three territories, adopted three resolutions developed and pushed over the past two years by Schwarzenegger and his friend New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a leading Latino Democrat who served in President Bill Clinton’s Cabinet.
Two of the resolutions are on alternative energy for electric power and a new transmission grid, and new biofuels to power vehicles. They set a target of 30,000 new megawatts of “clean energy” around the region by 2015, as well as increases in energy efficiency. The third resolution, on global warming and climate change, has the states agreeing to take somewhat vague steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions and urges the recalcitrant Bush Administration to invest in climate change research and support coordinated international efforts.
“This is key to who he is and how he sees himself,” says one Arnold friend. “It’s also key to making it clear he is a different kind of Republican.” It seems a new tack to some, but not to others.
As he was preparing to run for governor in the summer of 2003, Schwarzenegger told me that he intended to make renewable energy and climate change major issues in his governorship. He said he would push to expand the state’s requirement for the use of renewable energy sources in electric power generation, defend the state’s landmark law by LA area Assemblywoman Fran Pavley to cut tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases, and take further action on global warming. With some missteps here and there, he has done that.
According to an informed source, Schwarzenegger recently watched and appreciated An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary film on climate change by former Vice President Al Gore. “Without becoming a ‘Moonbeam’ like Jerry Brown, God love him, supposedly was, the idea is that Arnold uses his great fame and Republican standing to help mobilize the fight against global warming.”
The idea is also that Schwarzenegger be seen as a very different kind of Republican in a bad year for Republicans. While Schwarzenegger adopted this stance on renewable energy and climate change years ago, his previous team did very little to advance it, which led to the embarrassing result in a January poll that the governor was seen as no better on the environment than President George W. Bush. Since Schwarzenegger had just had the Public Utilities Commission enact the biggest solar energy program in the country, this was a particular wake-up call for how his team had been functioning and presenting him to the public.
One potential stumbling block for Schwarzenegger -- honored recently by Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair magazines as an environmental hero -- is the clean energy initiative which will almost certainly appear on California’s November ballot. It would raise $400 million a year from the oil industry through a tax levied at the wellhead. The governor, who has taken the no new taxes issue to heart as his way of remaining tethered to a Republican Party with which he has obvious sharp differences, opposes it.
It seems like a good idea, and might prove to be the seedbed for an alternative fuels for vehicles industry in California. It might also, given its sponsorship by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, run afoul on the sorts of charges that have bedeviled the stem cells initiative -- which was passed in large part due to Schwarzenegger’s support -- that backers have a conflict of interest because they seek to benefit from the research and development it would provide.
Angelides has endorsed it, and his allies have sought to make it a litmus test for seriousness in combating climate change. Angelides’ narrowly defeated Democratic rival, ex-eBay honcho Steve Westly, wanted to endorse it but became persuaded that he should not, given his positioning in the race as the Democrat least likely to raise taxes.
Another potential stumbling block is the question of coal-fired electric power production. Schwarzenegger’s administration has come up with requirements that future coal plants be at least as environmentally benign as natural gas plants. But is that good enough?
There are no coal-fired plants in California, nor are there plans for them. But California, especially the big Los Angeles municipal utility, the Department of Water & Power, imports a great deal of coal-fired power from other Western states.
If domestic fossil fuels have a future in electric power generation in the U.S., it is because of coal. If foreign sources were cut off, America has barely a decade’s worth of domestic supply of natural gas left, the relatively clean burning fossil fuel of choice in today’s electric power plants. That’s why there has been so much talk by Schwarzenegger and some business interests about importing expensive liquefied natural gas into California. Coal, however, is another question. America’s coal reserves could last for upwards of 200 years. Along with the former Soviet Union, the U.S. has the world’s largest reserves of coal, about 23 percent each of the global total. China, with 11 percent, ranks third in coal reserves, but first in coal production.
But there is a problem, even with the advent of “clean coal” to replace the traditional sooty image of this oldest of mined energy resources. Coal is a mineral consisting mostly of elemental carbon. And carbon waste product in the form of carbon dioxide is at the core of the greenhouse gas problem most scientists believe drives climate change around the world.
Coal from Mountain West states is at the core of the Frontier Line transmission project referenced by the new Western Governors Association resolution. The project has improved since Schwarzenegger energy honcho Joe Desmond started pushing it more than a year ago, moving from conventional polluting coal-fired electric power production (there is a reason why there are no coal-fired power plants in California), to “clean coal” that cut down on particulate pollution, to the current emphasis on still cleaner plants -- utilizing expensive technology still in development -- that would cut down not only on conventional air pollution but also greenhouse gas emissions.
The former Mr. Universe has embraced the idea that California should sign no new contracts for the importation of electricity from conventional coal-fired plants, which currently supply about 15 percent of the state’s power. Instead, all new contracts must meet a standard which is equivalent to a combined cycle natural gas-fired power plant. But this will require new technologies, both in the generation of the power itself and in the disposal of the carbon waste product.
This project can spur the next generation of coal-fired electric power production in the U.S., making America’s vast reserves of coal seem much more relevant than they otherwise would in the greenhouse era. As such, it could be a critical boon to the conventional energy and utility industries. And the utilities are lining up for it. Seven Western states utilities have signed on, including three big California outfits.
But the $6 billion project is a long way off, for technological, financial, and political reasons. Last year, the start date was 2015. This year, a more current sounding 2011 or 2012. Who knows when the technology will be ready, the funding in place, the environmental and land ownership concerns about the transmission power lines resolved?
Schwarzenegger’s anti-global warming drive also tripped up some, at least momentarily, at his Climate Action Summit in San Francisco City Hall. At the event hosted in April by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, the former action superstar slid back from his plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions in California.
Contrary to reports in the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and here, the assurances of his advisors, and a reading of his just delivered speech, Schwarzenegger in the give-and-take portion of the program backed off of his Climate Action Team’s call for the establishment of overall caps on greenhouse gas emissions, saying that he didn’t want “to scare business.” He said that he preferred to start off without a cap, although he seemed flexible on the matter. “We want to give them time,” he said.
But a day later, after being criticized here and elsewhere for flip flopping, the governor allowed as how he could live with a cap, so long as it was not immediate and gave business time to adjust, and embraced the start date of 2012 contained in related legislation by Pavley and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez.
Uh huh....
Arnold playing the green card. Either he has swallowed the hook, or he is politicizing, looking for grren votes. Either way, he's going to lose a lot of votes and for good reason.
Arnold thinks he's the Hulk?
Read "State of Fear" written by the same guy that wrote Jurassic Park.
Arnold's just playing to the crowd - the majority of Californians in both parties believe in the Al Gore edition of reality, so he has to play along. Expect any solutions he pushes to be long on style and short on substance.
Yup, certainly is. That's why Ferrigno got that "Hulk" gig back in the late 70s instead of Arnie.
It's a roughly consensus issue among most folks, and demonstrates a sense of prudent responsibility ("stewardship")on the part of any Governors, Presidential aspirants, Senators, Parties, etc.
R U Phishing for the liberal vote there Arnie?
Lets hope that after November he can go back to L.A. and be as green as he wants to be, just as long as he doesn't have anything to say about government!
I have a hard time picturing Arnold as "Kermit the Frog".
And the standards are based on bad science.
That's OK, more than a few of us here in California have a hard time swallowing that he is a Republican, much less a conservative. ;-)
Traditional conservationists are the best "pro-ecology" people you can find and they have been improving this nation, while allowing our induistrial, agricultural, and energy base to grow all along. IMHO, we should focus on continuing in that mold and avoid the "green" scene and all of its emotion, bad science, and fanaticism.
They are going to keep messing around until Californians are sitting in the dark, no heat or cooling. Heck in the summer we are almost there now with brown outs and the constant threat of rolling blackouts.
For the Americans who's water, electric, gas, and gasoline bills all together total less than $100.00 or $150.00 a month, and live in 600 and 1200 foot dwellings, it is amusing to listen to rich people lecture about saving resources.
Brilliant.
Let's all look forward to having our elderly dying because there is insufficient electricity to power air conditioners. How very French.
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