California governor invites states, provinces to green up

USING LOCAL LEVERAGE Arnold Schwarzenegger calls it a chance for states and provinces to influence negotiations on a new global climate treaty.

When it comes to the issue of climate change, Arnold Schwarzenegger is muscling his way into the international spotlight.

Today, the California governor will convene a two-day "Global Climate Summit" in Beverly Hills, Calif. More than 600 environmental officials and activists from Borneo to Bulgaria, along with five US governors and regional politicians from foreign nations, are expected to attend.

Schwarzenegger calls it an "historic summit" that will create "an alliance of states, provinces, and regional governments" to influence upcoming negotiations on a new global climate treaty.

He plans to join with Illinois and Wisconsin in signing agreements with two Indonesian and four Brazilian states to work on tropical forest preservation.

Schwarzenegger will also issue a declaration endorsed by 12 US governors, along with regional representatives from Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, and Mexico, to share technology and to cooperate on reducing global warming emissions from high-polluting industries.

Although California has the eighth largest economy in the world, the state has no standing in treaty negotiations, which are conducted between nations. That would be the purview of the Obama administration.

Even Mary Nichols, the governor's top greenhouse gas regulator, acknowledges that she wondered, at first: "Why are we doing this now, with a new administration in Washington? I was concerned it would look like grandstanding."

But on reflection, she said she concluded: "The governor is established as a leader on climate issues. It is something he cares about passionately."

The summit agenda includes panels on greenhouse gas measuring and reporting and on methods to cut emissions in the energy, forestry, agriculture, transportation, cement, steel, and aluminum sectors.

"American states have coordinated regionally, as in the Western Climate Initiative," said Eileen Tutt, deputy secretary of California's Environmental Protection Agency. "But as states, we haven't reached out to China, Brazil, and India before. That's a big step."

The Western Climate Initiative, endorsed by seven US states and four Canadian provinces, would slash regional global warming emissions by 15 percent below 2005 levels in the next 12 years. Fast-developing nations such as China have refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty to limit global warming pollution, saying it would limit their industrialization.

The Bush administration has refused to ratify a climate treaty until China, India, and other emerging nations agree to cap emissions. The United States is the only nonsignatory among major industrial nations.