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Home Front: Politix
Governator goes Green???
2005-06-17
A top German governmental official praised California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday for pledging to fight global warming over objections from the White House. In a message to Schwarzenegger, German federal environment minister Juergen Trittin congratulated the California Republican for his courage in splitting with President George W. Bush on the issue of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. "With his exemplary programme for reduction emissions, California - like Germany - has proved that even a country of car lovers can be in the vanguard of protecting the environment," Trittin said. Earlier this month, the governor attended the United Nations
World Environmental Day Conference in San Francisco, where he won praise from environmentalists with a plan to reduce the state's emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere and raising temperatures worldwide.
Schwarzenegger signed an executive order that calls for reducing the state's emissions of greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010, 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The Republican governor said that developing cutting-edge environmental technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells will conserve energy, curb pollution, protect natural resources - and be good for business.
Some very interesting background information and a rebuttal to Arnie's eco-fantasy at the always excellent Greenie Watch blog.
Posted by:Seafarious

#8  Arnie can sign an executive order declaring that the moon is made of green cheese if he likes, but that don't make it so.
Posted by: mojo   2005-06-17 10:08  

#7  Petroleum is a solar savings account that was deposited (read: converted) millions of years ago. Now we humans are drawing on that savings account. To substitute another energy source will require an energy conversion, and none of the conversions are ideal. The only one I can think of that is "green" is solar, and we are certainly not there yet.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Plug in your electric car and somewhere there is a dead dinosaur going up in flames to power a generator.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2005-06-17 09:58  

#6  Hydrogen economy is a no-go unless supported by massive changeover from coal/oil electrical power generation to nuclear power. And that includes so-called "breeder reactors" that will produce more fuel (enriched plutonium and uranium) as part of the process.

If we want to truly go "green" (without the masked marxism that often accompnaies it), and get to a hydrogen/fuel-cell economy, we need to go nuclear, NOW.
Posted by: OldSpook   2005-06-17 09:58  

#5  Phil, that is the hydrogen economy in a nutshell. Shift the emissions somewhere else and so what if it doubles or triples energy consumption. It's happening somewhere else.
Posted by: phil_b   2005-06-17 04:06  

#4  I thought Arnie had more sense. If he really wanted to help the environment there's loads of logical, common-sense things he could do.

carbon emissions are not part of the problem that can or should be solved
Posted by: anon1   2005-06-17 02:26  

#3  Oops. My fine, hand-carved mahogany blue hilighter pen inlaid with jasper and lapis lazuli unfortunately fell back behind the desk and I was too lazy to go fish it out from under the dust bunnies.

I'm also goooogling around for the meeting resolutions signed by the mayors attending on behalf of their cities. Horrifying. Worse than Kyoto, if any international law could be. Will post when I find 'em, later today.
Posted by: Seafarious   2005-06-17 01:06  

#2  Oh, and getting back on topic:

Given how much of California's power is out and out bought from out of state, isn't this a comedy of errors, in a way? The CO2 generated by California's pwoer needs is emitted in Texas and the great plains. So all he'd be doing would be shifting the blame around, at the cost of making the state even more vulnerable to the sorts of crises it faced in 2000, both from power wholesalers and the already strained electrical grid.
Posted by: Phil Fraering   2005-06-17 00:30  

#1  Em? I thought you had special editor-highlighting?
Posted by: Phil Fraering   2005-06-17 00:21  

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