Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and British Prime Minister Tony Blair signed an agreement on Monday to work together to curb greenhouse gas emissions, promote clean-burning fuels and collaborate on research to fight global warming.
Blair and Schwarzenegger announced the agreement at a meeting at the Port of Long Beach with prominent California and European business leaders on climate issues.
"California will not wait for our federal government to take strong action on global warming," said Schwarzenegger in a statement. "International partnerships are needed in the fight against global warming, and California has a responsibility and a profound role to play to protect not only our environment, but to be a world leader on this issue as well."
At the meeting, Blair called global warming "long term, the single biggest issue we face."
The agreement stops short of recommending mandatory cap-and-trade programs or other regulations that Britain and other European countries have implemented, which some environmentalists and Democratic state lawmakers are advocating.
Instead, the pact calls for studying the economic benefits and costs of such programs and of new energy technology, with an eye to a possible joint emissions trading program between California and Britain in the future.
BP Chief Executive Officer John Browne hosted the meeting at its terminal in Long Beach, with a company oil tanker looming in the background.
Blair and Schwarzenegger met privately with an array of corporate leaders, including Virgin Group Chief Executive Richard Branson, DuPont chief Charles O. Holliday Jr., Edison International chief John Bryson and Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The session was organized by the Climate Group, a London-based nonprofit organization.
At the news conference, reporters asked Blair and Schwarzenegger whether the agreement was an attempt to sidestep the Bush administration, which has been criticized for not acknowledging climate change more forcefully or embracing strong measures to combat it. The Bush administration favors voluntary emissions reductions rather than regulation.
Schwarzenegger responded that California would not wait for Washington to act, and he called climate change "the single most important issue" faced by the world community.
At a morning press briefing, the governor's communications director, Adam Mendelsohn, offered a milder comment. "Just to be clear," he said, for the press to report that the state was "bypassing the federal administration to enter into agreements with Great Britain would be wrong."
