I love California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don’t care if he’s a Republican. Yes it’s true his record on some liberal issues is less than stellar, such as on gay rights/marriage, though he’s still better on those than most Republicans. But on the issue of the environment, which I consider to be the single most important issue of our time, there is no politician of either party that even comes close to Arnold’s stewardship.

Defying Bush and many Republicans, he has embraced the global warming crisis and has used California’s clout as the world’s sixth largest economy to impose tough restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. The rest of the country benefits from this–if carmakers, for example, are forced to build more fuel-efficient vehicles for California they are better off doing it for the whole country rather than keeping different sets of standards by state. This becomes even more true as more and more states follow California’s brave lead on this issue.

He has vowed to restore California’s emission levels to 1990 levels by the year 2020, and bypassed Bush entirely by meeting with Tony Blair recently to get California to participate in the same carbon “cap and trade” program being used in Europe.

He is determined to inject the global warming debate into the 2008 presidential election, even though he’s not eligible to run himself because he wasn’t born in America:

“There is a whole new movement because of the change of people sent to Washington [referring to Democrats]. “We want to put the spotlight on this issue in America. It has to become a debate in the presidential election. It has to become an issue.”

He is being so influential in Republican circles on the issue that GOP contenders for president are calling him to consult about the issue.

He is also wise enough to see how leadership on the environment can serve to repair America’s image in the world that has been so badly tattered by Iraq:

“The war has dragged us down. There’s no reason to get political, that’s just the way it is. But you can balance it by being a great leader in the environment. The more America shows leadership in that area, the more we will be loved for that as much as they love us for our hamburgers and for our jeans and for our movies and for our music.”

I hope he is successful in what he’s seeking to do–and if I were a Californian he’d be the first Republican I ever voted for. It just goes to show that good common-sense politics can span both parties–even if it’s unfortunately rare.

Besides, the tech geek and transhumanist in me is a huge fan of his “Terminator” movies.

Tags: arnold, environment, global-warming, republicans, schwarzenegger