Schwarzenegger made his most important compromise last September, when he signed a Democratic bill capping greenhouse-gas emissions. With his Hummers, his private plane and his conspicuous delight in conspicuous consumption, Schwarzenegger is an unlikely environmentalist, but he's become a global salesman for the war on carbon. His message, as usual, is that the naysayers are wrong: you can clean up the environment and still have a growing economy with big houses and big cars. He talks about green technology as California's next gold rush, its next Internet boom: "One plus one can make three!" He scoffs at environmental buzzkills who want Americans to drive wimpy cars and live like Buddhist monks. "Guilt doesn't work," he says. He sees the future in the Tesla, a hot new electric car that goes from 0 to 60 in 4 sec. His model cost a mere $100,000.
It's not exactly the Sierra Club message, but he's a powerful messenger. He was in Vancouver to sign another climate deal when news broke that Bush would reject Europe's push for climate caps at the G-8 summit and would propose a meeting instead. "We don't need another meeting on global warming," Schwarzenegger told a crowd of reporters. "We need action." Action, of course, is Schwarzenegger's thing. He was never much for dialogue. In an interview, he marveled at Bush's notion that America shouldn't cap its own emissions until China and India agree to do so. "That's not what leadership is about," he said. "We don't care if Arizona is going to do the right thing; we take action ourselves."
