As regular followers of this blog will attest, I regularly bash President Bush and his political counterparts for criminally negligent obstruction of vital climate change policy responses. Bush reneged on first term campaign promises to regulate carbon dioxide [search], withdrew from Kyoto, and has just generally been criminally negligent in his impeding of crucial international cooperative matters. Frankly, regardless of good deeds after leaving office, the Clinton-Gore team was not able to achieve much either. They dropped the ball on a BTU based carbon tax, never tried seriously to get Kyoto ratified, and generally wasted the booming 90s as a decade to get out ahead of the climate change problem. I consider myself a green independent though given the current Republican neo-conservatism, I naturally am repelled. The point of the matter is that all political parties in the United States including the greens (such as they are) have failed the Planet and her citizens. Into this dreadful dearth of climate leadership has stepped Governor Schwarzenegger of California [search] and several other high profile state politicians including other Republicans such as Governor Crist of Florida — who recently unveiled rigorous climate policies for his state. Given, Arnold’s greenness is open to debate, nonetheless he has hit it on the head: the GOP as well as the states can and must lead on climate. I disagree with statements by Gore and others that climate change is apolitical — anything this important in regard to resource allocation has a major political element. However, all political stripes will be more or less equally decimated by failing climate and other global ecosystems. I do not really care which political philosphy latches onto the need to restrain growth and consumption to save the Earth, just that it happens. The climate change threat is deeply conservative while the response will require liberal change.