Britain, California to unite on global warming

LONG BEACH, Calif. — British Prime Minister Tony Blair and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced an agreement Monday to bypass the Bush administration and work together to explore ways to fight global warming.

The two leaders announced the pact as they met with business leaders on clean energy and climate issues.

"We see that there is not great leadership from the federal government when it comes to protecting the environment," Schwarzenegger said. "We know there is global warming, so we should stop it."

Addressing business leaders during an earlier panel discussion, Blair called global warming "long-term, the single biggest issue we face."

The agreement calls for collaboration on research into cleaner-burning fuels and technologies and possibly developing a system under which polluters could buy and sell the right to emit greenhouse gases. The idea is to use market forces and market incentives to curb pollution.

Environmental groups questioned the value of the agreement, calling it little more than a symbolic gesture.

California is looking to cut carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases that scientists say are warming the planet. President Bush has rejected the idea of ordering such cuts.

"This is an agreement to share ideas and information. It is not a treaty," said Schwarzenegger spokesman Adam Mendelsohn.

A Blair spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "It will be markets, not governments, that will decide which technologies are chosen in the future. Governments can give clear, credible, long-term signals to the market which will enable companies to develop the technology that will result in cleaner technology, more energy efficient technology."

Kristen Hellmer, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the agreement was "a wonderful amplification" of talks last year between the president and Blair."

For Schwarzenegger, a Republican who is running for a full term in November, the agreement comes at a time when he has been trying to distance himself from Bush in this mostly Democratic state.

His aides disputed speculation that the agreement was an attempt to sidestep the White House. In a conference call with reporters, state Environmental Secretary Linda Adams said the agency is in "constant contact" with federal regulators but added that there was no discussion with Washington about Monday's agreement.

Craig Noble of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said the pact had symbolic value, but that "the time for talk is over." He urged passage of a proposal, pending in the state Legislature, that would make California the first state to limit greenhouse-gas emissions from industrial sources.

"The bottom line is, voluntary is not enough," he said.

The world's only mandatory carbon-dioxide trading program is in Europe. It caps the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted from power plants and factories in more than two dozen countries.

Companies can trade rights to pollute directly with each other or through exchanges located around Europe. Canada, one of more than 160 nations that signed the Kyoto treaty, plans a similar program.

Although the U.S. is one of the few industrialized nations that have not signed the treaty, some Eastern states are developing a regional cap-and-trade program.

Schwarzenegger has called on California to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions to 2000 levels by 2010. California was the 12th-largest source of greenhouse gases in the world last year, bigger than most nations.