Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor of California, had some harsh words for the Bush administration's global warming failures. He spoke on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday about his response to the EPA's decision to not regulate CO2 emissions.

That decision was made Friday. The head of the EPA, Stephen Johnson, announced that his view was that regulating CO2 emissions would require Congress to enact new legislation as well as entertain public comment. Johnson effectively tabled the matter until a new president takes office next year. This follows a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the EPA has the power to regulate such emissions without waiting for Congress.

Schwarzenegger disagreed with Johnson's decision emphatically, commenting that the U.S. should be leading the fight against global warming, rather than waiting for China and India. He said that Johnson's move "really means basically this administration did not believe in global warming."

A move this late in the game by the Bush administration would not have repaired its past inaction on emissions, however, even in Schwarzenegger's opinion: "Well, to be honest with you, if they would have done something this year, I would have thought it was bogus anyway... because you don't change global warming and you don't really have an effect by doing something six months before you leave office."

The governor made it clear that, at least on energy, Sen. John McCain is not his first choice in November. Describing Sen. Barack Obama's campaign, Schwarzenegger said, "There are things I don't agree with him on, but he's taken leadership on a very difficult issue [climate change] and we haven't seen that kind of leadership in Washington."

While many of Schwarzenegger's political stances have kept step with Republican leadership, energy is an issue to which the governor of California has had to take a different approach. Just yesterday, the California Public Utilities Commission made a draft of its Strategic Plan for Energy Efficiency available for comment. The plan is a statewide push to raise energy efficiency across residential, industrial and commercial buildings. It is just one approach the state government is taking to deal with the major energy issues that have faced California in the past several years. 

Schwarzenegger has lead that effort effectively. In 2006, he signed historic legislation into law that imposed limits on greenhouse gases in California. That legislation was the first of its kind in the U.S. Schwarzenegger is effectively making a name for himself in political circles as someone willing to cross party lines to pass environmental protections — a fact that whoever is elected President in November would do well to keep in mind.

Photo — inACtion