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Governors Sign on to Climate Statement
July/August 2008
by Melinda Tuhus
It wasn’t a standard governmental policy speech. Forty years ago, declared the speaker in Woolsey Hall on April 18, both
bodybuilders and environmentalists were considered “weird fanatics.” But today,
he went on, everybody works out at the gym, and green doesn’t mean
“hand-wringing and whining,” but “hip, cutting-edge, forceful, self-confident,
and even sexy.”
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To reduce global warming, individuals should “eat less meat.”
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In this case, the keynote speaker of a conference on
global warming actually knew something about hip: he was California governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of four governors who showed up for a two-day
conference focused on the role of state governments. Another 14 did not attend
but added their names to a “Governors Declaration on Climate Change” that calls
for a state-federal partnership to reduce global warming, continued support for
state-based climate action plans, and incentives for “meaningful and mandatory
federal and state climate action.”
Conference organizer Dan Esty '86JD, a professor at
the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the director of the
Center for Environmental Law and Policy, says the gathering marked the 100th
anniversary of a conference of governors called by President Theodore Roosevelt
to address the need for land conservation. Roosevelt’s policies were heavily
influenced by Gifford Pinchot, Yale Class of 1889, who founded the Yale School
of Forestry—the nation’s first—and became the first director of the U.S. Forest
Service.
Also addressing the conference was Nobel
Prize–winning environmental scientist R. K. Pachauri, who suggested that if the
world is to confront climate change successfully, governments must put a price
on carbon emissions. “I hope the developing world does not emulate what
developed countries have done,” he said. Pachauri added that if he were to make
a single recommendation to individuals, it would be: “Eat less meat."
(Pachauri, who has taught at the environment school, returned to the campus
five weeks later to receive an honorary doctorate at commencement.)
But it was Schwarzenegger who fired up the crowd. “We
don’t wait for Washington, because … Washington is asleep at the wheel,” he
said. “America has to lead, and we are doing so even without Washington.” His
Woolsey Hall audience gave him a thunderous standing ovation.  |
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