In New York, Schwarzenegger Hugs Trees

To capitalize on the recent press attention given to talk of global warming, Governor Schwarzenegger traveled East this week to promote California's leadership on environmental issues.

At the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City yesterday, Mr. Schwarzenegger joked that, a decade ago, environmentalists were considered "tree-huggers" and "fanatics" who "were no fun — they were like prohibitionists at a fraternity party." Behind California's lead, however, the environmental movement is reaching a "tipping point," he said. Mr. Schwarzenegger predicted that in the near future, environmentalism would become a "mainstream" movement "built upon passion" rather than "guilt."

The governor also predicted that elected officials who don't fall in line with the increasingly mainstream effort to fight global warming will lose their political base. "You will become a political penguin on a smaller and smaller ice floe that is drifting out to sea," he quipped.

To save their seats while saving the planet, Mr. Schwarzenegger urged members of the House of Representatives to follow California's lead by writing global warming legislation. Last year, Mr. Schwarzenegger signed into law the country's first statewide cap on greenhouse gas emissions. In January 2007, he implemented a low carbon standard for transportation fuels.

Oil industry executives have long argued that global warming measures could cripple the economy, but Mr. Schwarzenegger said he had seen no evidence of economic decline. In the past three years, he said, California added approximately 850,000 jobs and has become a hub for new "clean green" high-tech companies. Green technology, he said, is the "new Silicon Valley."