The Governator

In his first two years as governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has implemented more ambitious initiatives to reduce global warming than any politician in America. "We have to make very, very aggressive moves to reverse this threat," he says. In June, the governor signed an executive order requiring California -- the world's sixth-largest economy -- to slash its climate-warming emissions by eighty percent by 2050. "The goal he set eclipses Britain's," says Sir David King, chief science adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair. "Now we're second to California -- and that is one race I'm delighted to be second in."

Schwarzenegger also backed a law requiring that all cars sold in California lower their emissions by nearly a third within a decade -- a move that sparked similar measures in ten other states, as well as a lawsuit by automakers. He is installing hundreds of hydrogen fueling stations along the state's major highways and is pushing California utilities to produce twenty percent of their electricity from renewable energy by 2010. "He belongs in the sparsely populated top tier of elected officials who are not only taking global warming seriously but devising solutions on a scale that actually matches the problem," says David Hawkins, climate director for the National Resources Defense Council.

Schwarzenegger -- who has been influenced behind the scenes by his wife's cousin, Robert Kennedy Jr. -- appears to have embraced his inner tree-hugger on a personal level as well. He has instituted a five-minute limit on showers at his home, downsized the fleet of Hummers that he has been collecting since his Terminator days and worked with GM to develop an SUV that runs on hydrogen.

His environmental policies are extremely popular with voters, proving that taking a stand on global warming doesn't hurt a politician at the polls. But Schwarzenegger, 58, characterizes his commitment to climate change as an issue of morality. "In decades past, when we brought this damage to the world around us, we did not know any better -- that was our mistake," he says. "But now we do know better. And if we don't do anything about it, that will be our injustice."

Next: The Visionary: Amory Lovins

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