Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
A Beacon of Hope for Conservation-minded Republicans
By REP Policy Director Jim DiPeso
Most of the Republicans noted for their environmental leadership have backgrounds common to people who enter public service. Lawyer. Military officer. Public administrator. State legislator. Mayor. Community activist. Industry executive.
Then, there’s the movie star who portrayed a post-apocalypse cyborg programmed to toss off deadpan one-liners.
These days, we Republican conservationists will take our environmental champions anywhere we find them.
A year ago, few people scouting the political field for emerging GOP environmental leaders would have considered Arnold Schwarzenegger. The former bodybuilding champion, who immigrated to America from his native Austria at age 21, was busy finishing his third Terminator movie, the latest in a cinematic career made up mainly of slam-bang action movies and the occasional light comedy.
But with all due respect to Californians, anything can happen in the Golden State. In last year’s biggest political story—and the most riveting, if improbable, political theater that Americans have seen in years—fed-up Californians booted gloomy Governor Gray Davis out of Sacramento.
In a quirky, simultaneous replacement election featuring 135 candidates, Schwarzenegger ran on a strong environmental platform and swept to victory with nearly 50 percent of the vote. Would this have happened if Schwarzenegger had run in a conventional election, competing against the dogmatic, anti-environmental types who often dominate California’s closed party primaries? Not likely.
And therein lies a lesson: given half a chance, a pro-environment Republican can win a big election. Republicans need not follow the half-baked ideology that the environment is an issue only for Democrats.
Schwarzenegger, who holds a degree in business and international economics from the University of Wisconsin-Superior, is a shrewd businessman and a dyed-in-the-wool Republican. He often says that his preference for the GOP dates to 1968, when as a young immigrant he sized up the presidential candidates of that year and decided he liked Richard Nixon’s ideas more than Hubert Humphrey’s.
After rising to fame in Hollywood, he served both President George H. W. Bush and California Governor Pete Wilson as chairman of their councils on physical fitness.
Last November, Schwarzenegger took center stage as the chief executive of a vast, complicated state that is home to 35 million people, produces more than $1.3 trillion in annual gross economic product, and often serves as a laboratory for public policy ideas that migrate to the rest of America.
Already, Schwarzenegger is sending America the latest new idea from California: a loyal Republican can win election as a strong environmental advocate, even in a state that seems to prefer electing Democrats to state-wide office.
Actually... that’s not a new idea. It’s an old idea. Nixon, Theodore Roosevelt and other GOP leaders did just that. In the last two decades, however, environmental issues have become deeply polarized on partisan lines. Too many contemporary Republican leaders seem to subscribe to the bizarre ideological dogma that environmental problems are not real and that solving them would cost too much even if they were real.
California’s 38th governor isn’t buying it. On January 6, in his first State of the State address, Governor Schwarzenegger said, “I intend to show the world that economic growth and the environment can co-exist.”
Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay probably gagged. Which is a very good sign.
The importance of Governor Schwarzenegger’s environmental platform is not so much in its details as in the fact that a popular, high-profile Republican elected official is taking environmental problems seriously, putting forward thoughtful ideas for solving them, and promising to work across the aisle to implement them. These days, considering the polarized morass in Washington DC, that’s progress.
Schwarzenegger’s platform is the sort of forward-looking program that brings back fond memories of conservation achievements produced by GOP governors of yore, such as Michigan’s William Milliken, New Mexico’s David Cargo* and Washington’s Dan Evans. His ideas demonstrate that other Republican governors who give the environment a high priority—like New York’s George Pataki and Massachusetts’ Mitt Romney—need not be seen as aberrations.
Several of Schwarzenegger’s positions are at odds with those of President George W. Bush. Where Bush favors increased domestic oil and gas production, Schwarzenegger emphasizes efficiency and solar energy. Where Bush opposes mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, Schwarzenegger has promised to defend California’s law setting carbon dioxide tailpipe standards for motor vehicles sold in the state.
Shortly after taking office, Schwarzenegger showed his mettle by fighting his fellow Republicans on behalf of clean air and won a partial victory. The issue was an appropriation rider proposed by GOP Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri. The rider would have barred California from toughening emissions reduction standards for small engines that power landscaping tools such as lawn mowers. Briggs & Stratton, a small engine manufacturer, has plants in Missouri.
California’s Air Resources Board estimated that by 2010, without further pollution controls on small engines, their emissions would be the same as four million cars. Without stronger small engine standards, California would be that much further from complying with its own ambient air quality targets for low-lying ozone, a known respiratory hazard.
Schwarzenegger worked his contacts in DC, including GOP Congressmen David Dreier and Jerry Lewis, both from California. The end result was a compromise that allowed California to retain its standards. Unfortunately, under the compromise, other states are barred from adopting California’s small-engine standards and must settle for the federal government’s lower standards.
Schwarzenegger’s proposals run the gamut of California’s environmental problems. He aims to try market-based approaches that could get results at lower cost. For example, he favors expansion of the “cash for clunkers” program to buy and scrap old vehicles that emit a disproportionate share of harmful emissions. He looks favorably upon “congestion pricing,” a market-based tool that has reduced downtown traffic jams in London and other foreign cities.
Examples of environmental problems that Schwarzenegger is tackling with innovative ideas include:
TRANSPORTATION AND AIR QUALITY
To reach his goals of cutting air pollution in half and reducing dependence on foreign oil, Schwarzenegger has proposed “hydrogen highways” — freeways with fuel stations located every twenty miles. Such hydrogen highways would help solve the chicken-and-egg dilemma that hampers the widespread commercialization of fuel-cell cars: automakers will produce the cars only if they can be conveniently refueled, but energy companies won’t develop the fueling infrastructure unless there is a large retail market for hydrogen.
Schwarzenegger says he will direct state energy and environmental agencies to expand markets for cleaner fuels, such as compressed and liquefied natural gas, ethanol, low-sulfur diesel, and biodiesel.
Schwarzenegger has justifiably been criticized for owning a stable of Hummers, the extra-heavy sport-utility vehicle that gets around ten miles per gallon. However, as an experiment, he plans to retrofit one of his Hummers to run on hydrogen. Let’s give him credit for recognizing the error of his ways and trying to rectify it with a demo project.
RENEWABLE ENERGY
Through incentives, Schwarzenegger wants to ensure that half of all California’s new homes will include solar photovoltaic panels, starting in 2005. He has proposed a Green Building Bank to finance building retrofits with energy-efficient lighting and other energy-saving technologies.
California is one of thirteen states with an energy portfolio standard requiring electric utilities to supply a minimum percentage of power from renewable resources. California’s standard is twenty percent by 2017. Schwarzenegger has proposed bringing the compliance date forward to 2010, and putting the state on course to obtaining one-third of its electrical energy from renewables by 2020. Coming from a state as large as California, this would give the renewable energy industry a huge boost.
PUBLIC LANDS
In a position at odds with the Bush administration, Schwarzenegger backs the orignal Sierra Nevada Framework, a management blueprint for eighteen national forests covering eleven million acres. The Forest Service, however, has rewritten the framework to allow greater logging overall, more timber removal in the back country, and cutting trees up to 30 inches in diameter. Schwarzenegger also has proposed establishing a Sierra Nevada Mountains Conservancy, similar to conservancies that California has established to acquire sensitive lands and carry out restoration projects for the coast, Santa Monica Mountains, Lake Tahoe, and other special places in the state.
CLEAN WATER
To protect California’s beaches and coastal waters from sewage and storm-water pollution, Schwarzenegger has announced his intention to order state agencies to incorporate pollution-free coastal development techniques, as well as accelerate the repair of aging sewage collection systems.
Schwarzenegger favors full implementation of Total Maximum Daily Load, a Clean Water Act program to protect watersheds from both “point” sources of pollution (such as sewage outfalls) and “non-point” sources (such as urban and farm runoff).
Why is Governor Schwarzenegger championing environmental issues that other Republican leaders have fumbled away to the Democrats?
Part of the answer is that children’s health is a hot-button issue with the governor. His campaign platform stated that children “suffer disproportionate impacts of dirty air, water, and dilapidated urban parks.” He promised to improve air quality along freeways adjacent to residential areas, fix up decrepit residential plumbing that leaches toxins into drinking water, and provide more urban parks in under-served communities.
Another root of Schwarzenegger’s environmental instincts is the state’s strongly pro-environment political climate. California has long been a national leader on air and water protection. The state has its own endangered species law, its own wild and scenic rivers system, its own appliance energy efficiency standards. California is home to one-third of America’s utility-scale wind power generation capacity.
In Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska, elected officials promote expanded offshore oil and gas drilling as an economic boon. In California, an elected official who promotes expanded offshore drilling might as well start sending out resumes. Schwarzenegger is the latest in a long line of California leaders, Republicans and Democrats, to oppose expanded drilling off the state’s spectacular coast.
California’s environment is a goose that lays golden economic eggs. Tourism is a $76 billion business, nearly six percent of California’s annual gross economic product. Hunting, fishing, and wildlife watching brought $5.7 billion into the state in 2001, according to the most recent survey published by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
California’s abundant natural treasures—beaches, mountains, forests, rivers, and deserts—are world-famous visitor attractions. The ten most popular of California’s national parks, recreation areas, monuments, and seashores drew nearly 29 million visitors in 2002.
As Schwarzenegger’s election platform stated, “California’s economic future depends significantly on the quality of our environment.”
A key role in drafting the platform was played by Terry Tamminen, a Santa Monica conservationist whom Schwarzenegger has appointed to head the California Environmental Protection Agency. Cal EPA is a Cabinet-level agency that oversees the state’s air, water, pesticide regulation, toxic substances control, and solid waste management programs.
Before joining the Schwarzenegger administration, Tamminen was executive director of Environment Now, a non-profit foundation that supports coastal conservation, forest protection, and clean energy projects in California.
So far, so good. Schwarzenegger’s program is ambitious; his pick to head Cal EPA has a solid reputation for fair-minded dealing in both the conservation and business communities. The key question, however, is whether Schwarzenegger can translate his program from words to deeds.
Schwarzenegger’s biggest job right now is keeping a monster wave of red ink from capsizing the good ship California. Schwarzenegger and the state legislature must find a way to make up an estimated $15 billion shortfall in the budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
Schwarzenegger’s proposed 2004-2005 budget for conservation and environmental protection programs would largely maintain the status quo. Counting both general and special funds, the state Resources Agency and Cal EPA would receive a slight increase. 'Person-years' of staffing would be reduced slightly.
California’s money problems are not a one-year issue, however. As a result of accumulated debt from past years, the wolf is at the door. If state voters reject Schwarzenegger’s proposed $15 billion bond to cover past deficits at the March 2 election, severe reductions in services, tax increases or both may be necessary to cover loans falling due —which could take the bloom off Schwarzenegger’s considerable popular appeal and cut into the political capital he will need to fund and implement his ideas..
Schwarzenegger will need to tap all of his smarts, popularity, and deft political instincts to navigate California through its current troubles. The governorship is the toughest role he has ever played, and there is no guarantee of a neat denouement to the plot line.
Schwarzenegger’s prospects have significance beyond California. If Schwarzenegger can put his environmental ideas to work, he will show other GOP leaders in Washington and elsewhere that they can safely champion the issue and provide the positive environmental leadership that America desperately needs from leaders of both major parties.
More importantly, Schwarzenegger’s success would help say “Hasta, la vista, baby” to decades of destructive polarization and make way for the environmental progress that is critical to America’s future.
We at REP America enthusiastically applaud Governor Schwarzenegger’s approach. Through both our national organization and our growing California chapter, we offer him our help in any way he needs it. And we encourage other current GOP governors and would-be governors to take a good, long look at Schwarzenegger’s winning script and then steal a page from it. It’s a script that offers great potential for others in our party, which badly needs to get right with the American people on environmental issues.
Jim DiPeso was one of Republicans for Environmental Protection earliest members and a founding director. From 1996 to 2001, he served as Secretary of the Board of Directors. His outstanding contributions were recognized with REP’s first Founders’ Award at our 2000 annual meeting. In the spring of 2001, as REP experienced the greatest growth spurt in its history, Jim resigned from REP’s board and became Communications Director. In October 2002, he was promoted to Policy Director. Jim’s talent and dedication have served REP very well over the years.
He has written five other Green Elephant articles, which are available on our web site:
Check out our web site for op-eds, letters to the editor and press releases that Jim has written on a variety of issues.
Jim lives in the Seattle area.
