Governors Issue Call For Action On Climate Change

Schwarzenegger, Rell Among Those Taking White House To Task

Photo by Bob Child • California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks Friday at a conference on climate change at Yale University in New Haven. Behind Schwarzenegger are Nobel laureate Rajendra K. Pachauri, left, and Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

New Haven — Concern about the environment and body-building have something in common. So declared California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in his address to a capacity audience at Yale University’s Woolsey Hall on Friday, the climax of the two-day Conference of Governors on Climate Change.

“Like body-builders, environmentalists have been seen as weird fanatics who are no fun, like prohibitionists at a fraternity party,” said Schwarzenegger, who rose to fame as an actor with the 1977 film, “Pumping Iron.” “For too long, the environmental movement has been powered by guilt. Guilt is passive. It’s inhibiting. Successful movements are built on passion and confidence that galvanize action.”

Schwarzenegger, a Republican, after outlining various initiatives his state is taking to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, told the 2,700 in attendance that the environmental movement is becoming “forceful, cutting edge, even sexy” and that he and other state leaders are taking actions “because Washington is asleep at the wheel.”

California, with the seventh-largest economy in the world, can have a significant effect on pushing various sectors of the economy, he said, citing the state’s effort to force U.S. automakers to meet mileage targets for new cars, an initiative challenged by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The message to the Michigan-based U.S. auto industry is: “Arnold to Michigan: Get off your butt” and start manufacturing more fuel-efficient cars, he said.

Before his speech, he joined Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine in signing a climate-change declaration, committing to new efforts to curtail emissions that are contributing to global warming and calling on the federal government to enact policies to do the same on a national level. The declaration was signed by an additional 14 states whose governors sent representatives to the conference.

“What we desperately need is a clear national policy” addressing climate change, said Sebelius, a Democrat. But, like other speakers, she said states are filling the vacuum left by Washington and creating a framework for a new policy direction certain to emerge with the next administration.

Rell, a Republican, said actions to reduce greenhouse gases through energy conservation, greater use of renewable energy sources and new technologies will not only help save the planet, it will also help create a new kind of economy.

Rell did not mention a bill pending in the state legislature that would make Connecticut’s voluntary greenhouse gas reduction efforts mandatory. Environmental groups are pushing for passage of the bill, which they say is needed because voluntary efforts are not moving the state toward the goal of reducing emissions to 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80 percent below by 2050.

Joining the governors and other representatives of various states at the conference were the premiers of two Canadian provinces, Quebec and Manitoba, that have taken steps to reduce their carbon emissions, and the governor of Mexico’s Sonora state and the environment minister of the Czech Republic.

Daniel Esty, director of the Yale Center for Law and the Environment, said the gathering illustrates the how state-level leadership “is providing a safety net” against the failure of the Bush administration to take an international leadership role in addressing climate change.

Esty noted that the event coincides with the 100th anniversary of President Theodore Roosevelt’s Conference of Governors that launched the conservation movement that spawned the National Park System and the U.S. Forest Service to begin meeting the environmental challenges of that era.

Yale’s own efforts, said Yale President Richard Levin, have cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent since 2005, at a very small cost overall.

“We’re demonstrating that reducing our carbon footprint is not only feasible, but also affordable,” he said.

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While many of the speakers at the conference focused on actions they have taken and future actions targeting global warming, R.K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, laid out the problems facing the planet because of the buildup of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels and other sources.

“In our drive toward industrialization,” he said, “we have pursued a pattern of development that is unsustainable” because of excessive consumption of natural resources including fossil fuels. Climate change, he noted, is no longer a theory, “but is something observable” in quantifiable rises in average world temperatures, sea level rise and other measures.

The effects of warming, he said, are more floods, droughts, heat waves, chronic water shortages in parts of the world, more diseases carried by insects, declines in agricultural production. Future predictions are similarly dire: 20 to 30 percent of wildlife species are at risk of extinction due to rising temperatures, he said, and crop failures could become severe in some areas.

“There is no part of the globe that is immune,” he said.

“We know we will have to adapt to climate change, but some countries have no choice but are having to take immediate adaptive measures, and we need to help them,” he said. “Emissions will have to peak at 2015 and decline after that” to stave off more catastrophic effects.

He called for the United States to take a leadership role in reducing carbon emissions and providing financial incentives for research into new environmentally friendly technologies.

“Society might actually benefit by taking these measures,” he said.

Individual actions are also important, he said.

“People should eat less meat. You would be healthier and so would the planet,” because of the tremendous resources used in raising and processing meat for consumption. Curtailing use of lighting and burning less gasoline would also help, he said.

“If you can think of one thing every day by which you can reduce your carbon footprint on the planet, there would be such an accumulation of these efforts,” he said. “After all, we all live on one planet, and we have to face this challenge together.”

j.benson@theday.com