A forest ablaze in Brazil. (Photo: Haroldo Castro/Conservation Int'l)

Arnold Schwarzenegger has some advice for his successor as governor of California, Jerry Brown: “The important thing is for California to stay in there and continue the things that we started.” The former governor was talking to actor Harrison Ford at a recent fundraiser for the non-profit Conservation International (CI), about advancing the environmental and climate agenda.

“Concentrate on giving incentives to companies because in the end it’s technology that will save us all,” Schwarzenegger told the group of several hundred CI donors at San Francisco’s Four Seasons Hotel last week.

Ford, who was moderating the on-stage dialog, expressed frustration that apathy toward climate change is “a daunting obstacle to overcome.”

Schwarzenegger urged a repackaging of the message. “I’m not a big believer in the guilt trip that has happened; in the Al Gore type of philosophy where you make people feel guilty,” he said. “Forget talking about the environment,” he said, if that’s an obstacle for Republican lawmakers. “Let’s talk about green energy. Let’s just reframe it.”

Ford seemed to be taking a different tack, pointing to California’s involvement under Schwarzenegger in programs to curtail deforestation, known by the acronym “REDD.”

“The answer’s not technology in the short term, but taking expedient and important critical steps immediately, like REDD, which can address at very low cost, without technology, the issue of climate change,” said Ford. Loss of forests around the world, especially in tropical zones, has been blamed for as much as 20% of global carbon emissions.

Ford said CI is working to “value the free services of Nature appropriately (such as clean air & water, healthy soils). We’re working on framing that argument.”

CI founder Peter Seligmann told the gathering that his organization has reframed — not just the message — but its mission emphasis from protecting biodiversity to improving human well-being.

Speaking to the value of framing, the former governor said he was “tricked” into making the appearance by Ford, who is also a CI vice chairman. According to Schwarzenegger, Ford asked if he believed in “free speech.” When the latter replied that he did, Harrison said “Good, because you’ll be giving one.” (Pa-rump-bump — One gets the sense that this gag has been used before to break the ice before a speech).

Referring to the former governor, Seligmann said he was touched by the presence of an endangered species: “a moderate Republican” (pa-rump-bump).

Photo: Gretchen Weber

After the hype and subsequent disappointment surrounding last year’s UN climate talks in Copenhagen, which failed to produce binding global agreement on emissions reductions, the expectations for this year’s talks, which open in Cancun, Mexico today, are much more modest.

“We’re not going to get a global, legally binding deal at Cancun,” UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced at the Governors’ Global Climate Summit at UC Davis earlier this month. “We’ve got to make it a staging post toward that deal.”

Rather than focusing on a comprehensive binding agreement, negotiators will likely focus on technical steps that could pave the way for a final deal at next year’s talks in South Africa, when the Kyoto Protocol expires. Those might include financing for developing nations to deal with climate change; setting standards for measuring, reporting, and verifying nations’ greenhouse gas emissions; and tackling emissions from deforestation.

Meanwhile, California is moving ahead with its plans to organize a network of sub-national cooperation, called the R20, which Governor Schwarzenegger announced in Copenhagen last year and officially launched at his summit in Davis two weeks ago.

“As a binding international agreement remains elusive, we know that there’s a lot of work that can be done at the sub-national level,” said Cal-EPA Secretary Linda Adams, who will be in Cancun promoting R20.  “In fact the UN itself says that up to 80% of all mitigation that will be required to keep the Earth’s temps stable will be done at the sub-national level.”

That work will primarily focus on organizing regional and local governments around to world to work together on clean energy projects, said Terry Tamminen, the former Cal-EPA chief who is currently leading R20 efforts.

“Basically our main purpose [at Cancun] is simply to say to them ‘Look, you’re not the only ones in this game, and we know you’re all frustrated because you haven’t been able to reach a successor agreement to Kyoto, but we at the subnational level are here to help. We’re going to be this bottom-up, even as you continue to try to get the top-down agreement and we’ll be waiting for you, whenever you show up,’” said Tamminen.

Over the last year, R20 has grown to include 69 governments and organizations, and Tamminen said he expects 100 members by the end of the year.  He said he’ll spend the next few months recruiting members, organizing structurally as an organization, lining up financing, and identifying projects that are “low-hanging fruit,” such as installing efficient street lighting, replacing old boilers with more efficient ones, and piloting waste-to-energy programs.

Tamminen said that Gov. Schwarzenegger plans to “devote a lot of his time” to R20 when he leaves office in January. 

“Next year in South Africa when the world meets, and the UN is once again looking for a global deal, you can imagine him taking center stage and saying, “Well, we’ve got a deal for you!” said Tamminen.

Gretchen Weber will remain in Cancun for the next two weeks, following the UN climate talks as a fellow with the Earth Journalism Network, a project of Internews. You can check back here, at the Climate Watch blog for dispatches, and follow her on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/gxweber.

Gov. Schwarzenegger making closing remarks at the Governors' Global Climate Summit (Photo: Gretchen Weber)

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s third and final Governors’ Global Climate Summit wrapped up Tuesday with the launch of a new international coalition aimed at developing projects that cut carbon emissions around the globe. R20, or “Regions of Climate Action” is the culmination of Governor Schwarzenegger’s efforts to spur “subnational” action to address climate change.

“We can’t afford to wait for national and international movement,” he said in a press release announcing R20. “Action is needed now.”

Currently the coalition includes representatives from more than 60 state, city, and provincial governments from around the world including those in Japan, Nigeria, Rwanda, Canada, and Iceland, as well as the United States (The “20″ in R20 has no particular meaning, according to members of the Governor’s staff, except to echo the concept of the “G20″ nations).

Also announced at the summit Tuesday was a new partnership between California and the provinces of Acre, Brazil and Chiapas, Mexico.  The effort aims to cut carbon emissions by developing forest-protection projects in tropical regions. The ultimate vision for the project is that well-monitored forestry projects in Brazil and Mexico could provide carbon offsets under California’s evolving cap-and-trade program. According to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), more than 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation.

Funding for the projects would eventually come from California companies purchasing those offsets, said Mary Nichols, head of the California Air Resources Board, the agency tasked with implementing the state’s global warming legislation, AB 32.

“We have a ways to go,” said Nichols. “First we have to develop all the accounting protocols in order to make sure that these projects are enforceable and that they can be monitored and verified, and we’re not at that point yet.”

Nichols said that there is skepticism about international carbon offsets because some projects have not turned out to be credible. Therefore, she said, it’s important to work with trusted partners to develop the “rule of law,” to make these offsets acceptable in the California marketplace.

“That means that any project that’s done in Mexico or Brazil will have to be as good as a project that was done in California in order to be credited,” Nichols added.

“It’s a real precedent-setting, historic agreement,” said Steve Schwartzman, Tropical Forests Director for EDF.

I’ll be reporting from the next round of UN climate talks, set to begin in Cancun at the end of the month. Schwartzman said this new partnership will be an important signal for the international negotiators there.

“It certainly shows that it’s possible to make concrete, substantial progress in addressing global warming, even in the absence of national policy in the United States or an international agreement,” he said.

"GGCS 3" is Governor Schwarzenegger's third climate summit. (Photo: Governor's Office)

I’m at the Governors’ Global Climate Summit in Davis this week, where representatives from more than 80 regional and local governments have come together for two days to try to figure out ways to reduce emissions and put the brakes on climate change.  The idea is that since last year’s UN climate summit in Copenhagen failed to produce a binding international agreement, and the US Congress can’t get it together to agree on any sort of energy and/or climate bill, cities and states and provinces can’t stand by and do nothing while the international community haggles and CO2 levels continue to creep higher.

The whole thing kind of reminds me of The Goonies. You know, the movie from the 1980s?  Remember in Goonies, when a whole neighborhood was going to be demolished because the residents couldn’t afford to save their homes? The parents didn’t know what to do and they just gave up, resigned to their fates. But then all the neighborhood kids, realizing that their parents weren’t going to protect them after all, got together in a rag-tag bunch and saved the day, and the neighborhood. Granted they saved their homes by finding a pirate ship filled with gold and jewels, but you get the idea.

That’s kind of what’s happening here at the Governor’s Global Climate Summit. The parents (i.e. national governments) aren’t acting, so the kids (i.e. “subnational” governments) are getting together to fight climate change where they can. It might not be the most streamlined way to address the problem, but according to host governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, there’s really no choice.

“We are doing our work,” he said, in his opening remarks Monday. “The green revolution is moving full speed ahead with or without an international agreement.”

This Schwarzenegger’s third and last GGCS. It’s unclear how effective the first two were, and how effective this one will be. At the least, they have raised the profile of climate efforts taking place at the subnational level, and they do provide an opportunity for regional leaders from around the world to share ideas and strategies. Specific accomplishments are listed on the summit website.  Tuesday afternoon, Schwarzenegger is expected to announce the launch of “R20,” or “Regions of Climate Action,” an idea he first floated at UN climate talks in Copenhagen last year. It’s a group of more than 60 (so far) regional governments, organizations, and institutions, with the goal of working together to “expand the global green economy, create new green jobs and build commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” according to a FAQ sheet from the Governor’s press office.  R20 is incorporated as a non-profit organization in Geneva, Switzerland.

Also expected tomorrow is an announcement detailing a new partnership between California and provinces in Brazil and Mexico, focused on reforestation.  Eventually, forestry projects in these regions may provide international offset opportunities for California corporations under the state’s cap and trade program, a Cal-EPA spokesperson said.  News of this announcement was actually leaked by actor Harrison Ford, who spoke to the attendees as a board member for Conservation International.

Maybe what the “Terminator” needs to get this Goonies remake in the can is an assist from “Indiana Jones.”

California’s chief air regulator was jubilant: “They didn’t know who they were messing with,” said Mary Nichols, when the first numbers came in from the polls.

Nichols, who chairs the state’s Air Resources Board, was reveling in the 20-point trouncing that voters gave the statewide ballot measure to freeze the state’s greenhouse gas law, known as AB 32. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger seized the World Series moment and the locale, adjacent to the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark, to take a swing at the oil companies that financed Prop 23: “Less than 24 hrs later, we are beating Texas again,” proclaimed the Governor, who has made the state’s 2006 climate law a tent pole of his legacy.

While much was made of the millions that two Texas-based oil companies put into Prop 23, opponents, led by some pillars of Silicon Valley’s “clean-tech” and venture capital community,  eventually outspent the oil companies three-to-one. The “no” forces argued that the state’s environmental leadership was already yielding its own dividends in jobs and innovation. Voters apparently agreed.

Carl Pope put it succinctly: “It tells me that the future of California has arrived,” the Sierra Club chairman told me on election night. “Once you create a clean energy economy, people will not let it go.”

Prop 23 sought to suspend all regulations under AB 32 until the state unemployment rate dropped to 5.5% or lower, for four consecutive quarters. AB 32 is scheduled to be fully implemented, starting in two years.

(Archival Photo: Angela George)

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger used his appearance at the Commonwealth Club in Santa Clara today to “put a spotlight” on what he called the “self-serving greed” of oil companies Valero, Tesoro, and Koch Industries. These companies, two of which he described as among the state’s top polluters, are bankrolling Proposition 23 for their own gain, while trying to hide behind a false claim that the initiative would be good for the state’s economy, said the Governor. Prop 23 would suspend California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32, which authorizes incentives and regulations for reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Schwarzenegger’s speech was timed to the fourth anniversary of the law.

Proponents of the ballot measure claim that allowing AB 32 to be fully implemented would drive businesses from the state and could potentially cost the state more than a million jobs, a figure which has been challenged in several studies.

“They are creating a shell argument that this is about saving jobs,” said Schwarzenegger. “Does anyone really believe that these companies, out of their black-oil hearts are really spending millions and millions of dollars to protect jobs? It’s not about jobs at all. It’s about their ability to pollute and thus protect their profits.”

He said that green jobs in California have grown ten times faster than the statewide average since 2005, and that they now comprise the single largest source of jobs in the state. Passing Prop. 23, would kill investment in the strongest sector of California’s economy, said the Governor.

“The old oil companies are all out for Prop. 23. Silicon Valley is overwhelmingly against it,” he said. “Which side do you believe our economic future as a nation is on?”

The full recording of the Governor’s speech from today’s Climate One event at the Commonwealth Club will be broadcast tonight at 9 p.m. in the Bay Area on KQED Public Radio (88.5) and in the Sacramento region on KQEI (89.3).

SunPower CEO Tom Werner and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Photo: Gretchen Weber

Silicon Valley-based solar cell manufacturer SunPower Corp. announced today that it’s decided to site its newest manufacturing plant in California, a move that CEO Tom Werner says will create hundreds of jobs and may prompt an “economic cluster” that will attract similar projects.

SunPower has partnered with contract manufacturer Flextronics, and plans for the Milipitas-based operation to be up and running by the end of the year, producing high-efficiency solar cells.

Werner and Flextronics CEO E.C. Sykes were joined at the announcement in Milipitas by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who sported a green tie and chastised the assembled crowd for not celebrating Earth Day with similar fashion choices.

“I am so excited about this,” said Schwarzenegger about the new project. “This proves that protecting the economy and protecting the environment can be done simultaneously.”

Werner said locating the manufacturing operation in California makes sense both for economic reasons and because California is home to a large solar market, thanks to  the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, requiring 33% renewable energy by 2020, and the Million Solar Roofs Initiative.  Werner added that a record 50 megawatts of rooftop solar power were installed last month in California.

“You want to be close to your customer for logistical reasons, and also because you learn from your customer and you build it back into your product,” Werner told me following the staged media event.  “And by being local you can learn faster than you can if you’re distant.”

Other California selling points were a green manufacturing equipment sales tax exemption, which enabled SunPower to buy equipment for the facility tax-free, and low-interest loans from Recovery Act funds granted through the City of Milpitas, said Werner.

Governor Schwarzenegger used the occasion to warn Californians against taking the state’s environmental laws for granted.

“Right now there are greedy Texas oil companies that want to come in here and spend millions of dollars to roll back AB 32 (the state’s 2006 carbon legislation) and our other environmental laws,” he said. “Why? Because they don’t like that there’s alternative energy being created.  They don’t like what you are doing here.”

Thank you so much for this great introduction, Governor Campbell, or Premier Campbell. It’s exactly the way I wrote it. That’s right. (Laughter) Just joking. He has been a terrific partner and a great, great friend and of course we will see each other up there at the Olympics, which is going to be probably the best-organized Olympics, knowing you. So thank you very much also for your invitation.

I also want to thank Governor Jose Serra for the wonderful speech and the very profound things that he said. And you have been also an extraordinary leader, so thank you very much. Let’s give him also again another big hand for the great work. (Applause)

And then Ivo de Bóer from the U.N., we want to thank him for organizing this and being a great leader and believing in the subnational governments.

And also we have from California here some people like Linda Adams, who is in charge of the EPA. Where’s Linda Adams? Stand up, Linda. Let’s give her a big hand. (Applause) Then Senator Fran Pavley, who is a great, great leader. Where is she? Can you get up? OK, right there. (Applause) Extraordinary leader in California. Without her we wouldn’t have been able to go as far as we did with the reduction of greenhouse gases and so on. And then we have Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner. Where is she? She is also here. Let’s give her also a big hand.

I love giving this speech here just simply because I’m not the only one that has an accent. It’s a good place to come. (Laughter)

But anyway, it is wonderful to be back here again. So before I say anything and do anything, let me just thank the U.N. and the people who have worked very hard on this to make this whole meeting happen. Let’s give them a big hand for their great, great organization. (Applause)

I especially want to thank Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for his early attention to the threat of global climate change and I want to congratulate him on his great, great leadership on the issue that has brought us all together.

I am delighted and honored to be with you in Copenhagen. This is not the first time I’ve been here; I’ve been here many, many times before, if it is for my movie promotions or for coming here for bodybuilding and weightlifting seminars, or just on vacation and so on. But I never thought then that one day I will get here as the governor of the great state and talk about climate change, so this is really terrific. So it’s great.

And this city, of course, distinguishes itself by being so clean you can actually swim in its harbor, even though I wouldn’t recommend it right now because it’s a little cold, of course. But how happy we would be if all the world’s harbors would be as clean.

As everyone knows, also in the harbor there is the “Little Mermaid,” the statue based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. When I was a boy in Austria, the Andersen fairy tale that I always liked best was “The Ugly Duckling.” And looking back, I think the reason that I liked it was because it was a tale of transformation and that spoke to me inside. I have always believed in the tremendous power of personal transformation.

The desire, the hope, the desperate need for planetary transformation is what brought us together here. And the question is: is this also a fairy tale? Is it a dream? Is it a false hope? And if it is not, how do we make it real? Is that something that we ought to discuss? And this is something that I do want to discuss here while I’m here with you. Look around this carbon-conscious city and you should feel hope. Copenhagen is often voted as one of the most livable cities in the world.

So the question really is, how do we make the world itself livable and sustainable? Certainly, it would be terrific if the world’s governments reached an agreement and put hard caps on greenhouse gases while generously helping poor nations, who are least responsible for and least able to respond to climate change. Attempting to reach such an agreement is good and is actually very, very important.

But why do we put so many hopes and eggs into the big international agreement basket when, according to the UN itself, up to 80 percent of greenhouse gas mitigation will be done at the subnational level?

In recent weeks, the prospects for this gathering here have gone up and down, up and own, like a roller-coaster ride. And everyone was in fear, of like what will the U.S. do? What will China do, or not do? Is it going to be 20 percent reductions or a 17 percent reductions? Is the base 1990 or 2005? Should it be 350 parts per million or 450 parts per million?

But what if I said that international agreements, as critical as they are, will never do enough? What if we took that as a given? Wouldn’t that expand the possibilities and approaches for progress we would consider?

I mean, my late mother-in-law, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the remarkable woman who started Special Olympics, an organization that dedicates itself to people with intellectual disabilities, gave me an insight on this. She was the sister of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Teddy Kennedy and she knew everyone in American power and politics.

But she once told me that while the federal government was important for policies related to Special Olympics — such as health care, equal rights, job creation, dental care and so on — but she never would have relied on the federal government to build Special Olympics. She said you need all kinds of different elements and entities like local government, state government, volunteers, corporate sponsors, coaches, celebrities and, of course, the families.

She said that no one from government is going to be there at the sports events and hug those kids when they come through the finish line, or organize the competition so there is a finish line in the first place. No one from government trains those kids so they don’t hurt themselves or so they know how to perform those sports. She said, no, that is up to many of us, many different entities. And she built a movement, a worldwide movement that has spread to 180-plus countries.

So history tells us that movements began with the people, not with government and then, when they became powerful enough, government responds. In the U.S. the labor movement, the women’s suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam anti-war movement — they did not begin in the corridors of power in Washington.

So there’s a lesson in this for our cause. While national governments have been fighting over emission targets, subnational governments have been adopting their own targets and laws and policies. While national governments have been trying for years to define what Kyoto means, businesses are pursuing cutting-edge technologies to solve energy and environmental problems. While national governments debate how carbon caps will affect their economies compared to others, many of their citizens are seeking greener lifestyles on their own.

Government clearly has a major role, there are no two ways about that. But I also believe in the power of the iconoclast and the entrepreneur and the individualist. I believe in the power of the scientists, the capitalists and the activists. I believe in the power of the cities and the states and the provinces to be laboratories for new ideas, which the national governments then can go and study and adopt.

I mean, too often, I think, we fail to see the potential and the progress that is being made on all those different levels. By putting all of our eggs in one basket, we fail to see the eggs in the other baskets.

Let me give you a few quick examples.

Dr. Rajendra Pachuari, who came to our environmental summit in California just recently, he has his own target. He is replacing kerosene and paraffin lanterns with solar light for 400 million rural people in India — 400 million people in India. Think about that. So if the nations of the world do not sign a carbon agreement, does that mean the doctor’s transformative work in India doesn’t count?

In the U.S., in the small town of Roscoe, Texas, a German company has completed the world’s largest wind farm. If we don’t reach a major carbon agreement, does that mean the Texas wind farm doesn’t really count?

With the assistance of Greenpeace, four of the world’s largest meat producers agreed not to buy cattle from newly deforested areas of the Amazon. That doesn’t count?

The head of an energy company in China recently said of renewable and efficient energy, “We think that this is a new business for us, not a burden.” And China now is becoming the leader in developing and manufacturing renewable energy equipment. That doesn’t count?

Yes, sure, they all count. And they reveal that something is happening, something that is happening below the national level.

California, for instance, is working with cities and with states and provinces and regions and nations, including Mexican states, Canadian and Chinese provinces and European nations. We’re even working with the U.N. to assist developing countries, especially in Africa. We are trying to foment change and collaboration and movement. We’re doing everything we can to change the balance of power on the environment.

And of course when I talk about California, I realize that while we may lead America and many other countries environmentally, Denmark here is already one-third more energy efficient. Isn’t that fantastic? And Europe is a great leader in this whole thing.

But the reason for discussing my adopted home state of California is because, first of all, I’m the governor of the great state of California and I have a little right to brag about our state, right? And also, California is the seventh largest economy in the world and also America’s trendsetter, so what we do has consequences. Now, maybe when you look at the globe it is just a little dot, or maybe you cannot even find California. But the power of influence we have is equivalent to a continent. And we in California do not believe and we do not behave, as if progress has to wait for Washington or Beijing or Kyoto.

In California, we are proceeding on renewable energy requirements and a cap and trade system for greenhouse gases. We are moving forward. As a matter of fact, we are making great progress. If hydro is included, we will get 45 percent of our energy from renewables in ten years from now and we are already at 27 percent.

We are proceeding on the world’s first low carbon fuel standards and limiting greenhouse gas emissions from cars which, by the way, the Obama Administration has now just adopted. We are proceeding in a major way on green tech, no matter what happens in Washington or in Copenhagen. Billions of dollars, nearly 60 percent of all venture capital in America, flows to California and this is creating the critical mass of money and intellect to develop new green technologies.

Leaders from around the world are coming to California to see what we’re doing. I took the French Foreign Trade Minister to a business in San Francisco called Solazyme, which was just recently named the most innovative bio-energy company. They have come up with a way to convert algae into a fuel that is 90 percent cleaner than petroleum-based fuels. The U.S. Navy has just signed an agreement with them and is going to use that fuel to power some of its ships.

So from what I see in the research labs and venture capital start-ups around the globe, I believe that the world’s businesses will move to solar and to wind and alternatives much faster than the people expect.

Kenya, for instance. Kenya already gets nearly three-quarters of its power from hydroelectric and from geothermal — three-quarters. And next month it will begin work on a $760 million wind farm that by 2012 will increase Kenya’s power supply by about 30 percent.

Now, the uplifting thing is that the developing nations will be able to leapfrog into the green economy and skip the fossil-fueled industrial revolution. Isn’t that wonderful?

I believe that we have economics on our side. Since the supply of wind and sun and algae is unlimited, their prices will not jump. That cannot be said of oil, the supply of which is limited and declining. That cannot be said of coal, whose costs of extraction and labor and transportation are bound to rise.

So I believe technological and economic forces will overtake the political and the regulatory efforts of national governments. We are beginning one of history’s great transitions – the transition to a new economic foundation for the 21st century and beyond.

Shouldn’t we organize to encourage this transition even as we continue to work toward international compacts? Of course we should. Now, if this conference does not get a strong agreement, some will say that Copenhagen has failed, that we talk grandly but we are fooling ourselves, much like the fairy tale, “The Emperor Has No Clothes.”

And others will say that any agreement that is being reached isn’t enough because the world is going to melt and we’re going to die anyway.

Others will say, “Look at those crazy people trying to wreck the global economy.”

No, ladies and gentlemen, this conference is automatically and already a success.

Kyoto brought the world’s focus to what must be done. It brought the focus to that whole subject. We didn’t know then what we know now. We didn’t have as much experience with the science that we would research or the hurdles we would face. But Kyoto made us think differently about the world.

And perhaps the real success of Copenhagen is to give us the opportunity to think differently again. Perhaps the success comes in realizing that something different needs to be done and in fact is already being done. It’s being done at the sub-national level.

And I would ask the U.N. to convene a climate summit like Copenhagen but for cities, for states, for provinces and for regions. And I will be more than happy to host such a summit in California or anywhere else the U.N. wants to hold it but I recommend strongly in California. (Applause) People like coming to California. They love our state.

So ladies and gentlemen, the world’s governments alone cannot make progress, the kind of progress that is needed on global climate change. They alone cannot do it. They need everyone coming together, everyone working together. They need the cities, they need the states, they need the provinces and the regions. They need the corporations, the activists, the scientists and the universities. They need the individuals whose vision and determination create movements. They need everybody out there.

So ladies and gentlemen, let us regain our momentum, let us regain our purpose, let us regain our hope by liberating the transformative power beneath the national level.
That can be the great contribution of Copenhagen — that could be the great contribution of Copenhagen.

So thank you for inviting me. Thank you for your kind attention and warm hospitality. And thank you for the great passion and for the hard work that you all do. And it is very important that we continue with this work.

So thank you very much and I’ll be back. Thank you.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to arrive in Copenhagen on Monday, ready to rally the world’s “subnationals” in the fight against global warming. This is the first time that UN climate talks have created a formal role for states, provinces, cities and the like, and California’s governor will be loaded for bear.

In the weeks leading up to Copenhagen, the Governor turned up the heat on climate rhetoric, with a series of related media events. On Treasure Island, a low-lying man-made rectangle on San Francisco Bay that he said “could be under water” by the end of the century, Schwarzenegger unveiled the state’s climate adaptation strategy with a video tour of California’s climate vulnerabilities, powered by graphics from Google Earth (if you just want the gist, there’s a shorter version available).

The Governor also seized the occasion to preview his trip to Copenhagen, saying we “can’t wait” for national and multi-national efforts to save us from the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change; that “subnational” actors like California–perhaps led by California–should stay focused on their own efforts to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare for the changes already on the way. The Governor’s speech to COP 15 delegates on Tuesday will be a chance to do some crowing about California’s climate leadership, on an international stage, before a media gallery that’s been estimated at somewhere between 3,500 and 5,000 members.

The governor appeared at a Friant Dam press conference with state Senator Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, author of the bond initiative. Schwarzenegger said he’s hopeful that the bond, along with other measures in last week’s comprehensive water agreement, will put an end to the “holy water wars” pitting Northern v. Southern California and among cities, agriculture, fishing communities, and environmentalists.

The the governor signed the bond bill amid criticism that last-minute negotiations added more than $1 billion in earmarks designed to win support for the measure.

See our map, prepared by KQED editor Dan Brekke, for a detailed breakdown of where the $11.14 billion in bond money is supposed to go.

View KQED: California Reservoir Watch in a larger map