New Haven Independent

Yet as four governors gathered in person and 14 more signed on to the “Governors’ Declaration on Climate Change,” both Schwarzenegger and Rell’s minions handed out two-page press releases printed on one side of the paper. And a young Yale staffer hauled a box of two dozen individual plastic water bottles up to the balcony of Woolsey Hall for the thirst-quenching of the media multitudes gathered for an event that may or may not have been historic.

As the speakers at the two-day conference - governors, top state-level environmental officials, R.K. Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and co-recipient (with Al Gore) of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize and Yale President Rick Levin (pictured here) - pointed out, government action, at the state, federal, and global levels, is critical to addressing the problem.

But so is individual action, and people who undertake to reduce their carbon footprint risk being dismissed as irrelevant and preachy in the face of the global climate change juggernaut.

When a reporter suggested to Rell’s press aide that two-sided printing would save resources - which was, after all, a main focus of the conference - he readily agreed, but one wonders how long it will take policy makers and opinion leaders to walk the talk, or even if they feel that changing any personal habits is useless or counter-productive to the effort to get governments to take meaningful action to reduce global warming. Aren’t governments made up of people?

Schwarzenegger told the crowd, “In California, we’re doing everything we can to change the balance of power on the environment. What we’re doing is not waiting for Washington. We are applying leverage by setting tough environmental standards - like our laws to cut greenhouse gas emissions and transform renewable fuels - so at some point the whole environment movement shifts.”

Echoing President Bush, the Republican governor added, “I believe in American technology, and I believe that technology is what eventually will save the environment.”

How long is “eventually”? Top climate scientist James Hansen said two years ago that we have a decade left to make major changes, or Earth will become “a different planet.”

The thrust of the conference was to celebrate the initiatives taken by states. The Governors’ Declaration on Climate Change called for a federal-state partnership to take on global warming and for federal support for the existing state-based climate action plans.

Preceding Schwarzenegger, the IPCC’s Pachaury said many of the worst impacts of climate change will affect - and already are affecting - poor people in low-lying areas of the world the most. He also said that the IPCC does not make recommendations - it just presents facts - but he suggested that if the world is going to successfully confront climate change, governments must put a price on carbon emissions. He added that if he were going to make one recommendation, it would be “to eat less meat.” And one cautionary note: “I hope the developing world does not emulate what developed countries have done.”