In England to meet with erstwhile British
Prime Minister Tony Blair last month, California Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger spoke optimistically about solutions to global
warming. Business opportunities, he said, could make clean
technology the “new gold rush,” according to the
Sunday Telegraph of London.
“Technology in the end is going to save the day. Technology
is going to save the environment,” Schwarzenegger pronounced.
“The faster we can improve technology with cleaner cars,
cleaner jet engines and so on, the better it is.”
It was a typical Schwarzenegger performance, by which I mean to say
it was charming and, as is too often the case with the telegenic
former Terminator, unrealistic. Discounting asteroid and comet
strikes, there are two primary threats to humanity’s
existence: nuclear war (which Schwarzenegger will have no chance of
addressing outside the four corners of a movie screen) and global
warming, which he could address, but is instead using as the set
for his latest politico-cinematic feature, Arnold Against
the Hotness.
In promoting
Hotness, Schwarzenegger has done a good job of
attaching his administration to the general idea of greenness (and
a dizzying array of environmental/anti-warming proposals that may
or may not ever become reality). The tack has been great for the
governor’s image; over the last two years, he has gone from
31 percent voter approval to 61 percent support and another term in
office.
I know Schwarzenegger is dedicated to image. I am
less certain that he intends to do much about the reality of global
warming, and this issue’s cover story, “Hydrogen
Highway Revisited” by Matt Palmquist, offers a glimpse at
some of the reasons for my skepticism.
In 2003,
Schwarzenegger proclaimed a bold new age: Hydrogen filling stations
would sprout every 20 miles on major California highways, and half
a million hydrogen-powered cars would bustle cleanly and greenly
hither and yon across the state. It hasn’t happened, of
course, and anyone with a speck of interest in the field would have
known that hydrogen — as alluring an energy panacea as ever
could be imagined — is at best a shaky long-term bet as a
transportation fuel.
So why does Schwarzenegger continue
the fiction that hydrogen can be a large and current part of the
global warming solution?
First, hydrogen is sexy, and
both Schwarzenegger and George Bush hope its aura of environmental
innovation will rub off on them. Second, a focus on hydrogen
pleases oil and auto companies that are heavily invested in fossil
fuels (and in the current governor of California and president of
the United States). The oil and car companies know that hydrogen
bromides delay a real response to global warming for decades
— decades that could allow them to recoup their fossil
fuel-related investments as they set themselves up to dominate a
new, hydrogen-powered world.
But the planet can’t
wait decades. Global warming is a real and present danger, and we
shouldn’t be girly-men, waiting for the big strong scientists
to save us from the Hotness. We can be heroes to our children and
grandchildren by simple expedients: driving smaller, more efficient
cars, and demanding that our governments strictly regulate carbon
dioxide emissions. Now.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Global charming.
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