Arnold Schwarzenegger is fond of calling California a nation-state and accordingly he practices his own foreign policy, forging an international alliance to combat global warming. On Friday the California governor signed a memorandum of understanding in Los Angeles with Steve Bracks, the premier of the Australian state of Victoria. The two Pacific Rim states agreed to share technology and develop policies to develop international carbon trading markets, reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, foster clean energy technologies and worth together on energy efficiency standards. Schwarzenegger has signed a similar accord with U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and he has collaborated on green policies with the premier of British Columbia. But the California-Victorian alliance is particularly noteworthy, representing a growing rebellion against national governments perceived as obstructionist on global warming. "This agreement exemplifies the leadership role of sub-national jurisdictions in driving global climate change solutions," the document states. Australia, of course, is the only other major industrialized country to join the United States in refusing to enact the Kyoto Accord. The country of 20 million is heavily dependent on cheap and highly polluting coal and conservative Prime Minister John Howard, a close ally of President George Bush, has doggedly resisted efforts to impose emissions limits. Victoria, Australia’s second-largest state, is governed by the left-leaning Labor Party and is the California of Australia when it comes to promoting clean energy and policies to fight global warming. (Victoria, for instance, is helping fund the world’s largest photovoltaic solar power station.) Howard is in a tough re-election fight, and as the country suffers through one of its worst droughts on record, climate change has emerged as a major campaign issue. The prime minister is bashed almost daily by the Labor Party environment spokesman, former Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett, and now he’s got the Terminator doing photo-ops with the opposition.
Schwarzenegger’s Green Foreign Policy
May 7, 2007 by Todd Woody
Green Wombat 
Just to correct an inaccuracy in this article, Australia and the U.S. are not the only major industrialized countries refusing to enact the Kyoto Accord. The Conservative government in Canada has also refused to implement Kyoto, despite the fact that Canada signed the treaty under a previous Liberal government.
Nice to see state/provincial governments taking action where their federal counterparts refuse to do so though!