Bless Arnie. As far as action hero movie stars turned politicians go; he's not too bad a guy when it comes to environmental policy I guess and he is making some serious attempts to clean up California.

He's certainly better than Ronald Reagan, whose reign had me awake at nights as a child worrying about nuclear war.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, recently signed the "Low Carbon Fuel Standard" order; the world's first.

The aim of the order is to reduce the amount of carbon emissions generated by California's transportation fuels by a minimum of 10 percent by 2020. California is supposedly the 12th largest source of carbon dioxide globally and  registered vehicles outnumber the population.

According to Arnie, achieving the goal will "more than triple the size of the state's renewable fuels market, and add seven million alternative fuel vehicles to our roads"

Brr... the concept of adding more vehicles is not a good one; it's saving a little in order to spend more, robbing Peter to pay Paul etc. I think they'd be better placed *also* getting the overall number of vehicles down and people driving less.

Alternative fuel or not, all vehicles have an impact. Firstly, there's the manufacturing process and while ethanol and biodiesel are wonderful, it means increased land use and diverting food crops to fuel crops; pushing up the price of food.

Anyway, having said that, while it's not totally hasta la vista to fossil fuels by any means, it's an admirable move and these small steps help encourage others to implement similar strategies. One step leads to another; at least I hope it will.

The old saying goes that behind every great man is a great woman and this appears to certainly apply in Governor Schwarzenegger's case. His wife is Maria Shriver, who is well known for her progressive work in the community. I get the feeling that Maria has a great deal of influence over Arnie's policies and they make a very good team.

Read more about Governor Schwarzenegger's Low Carbon Fuel Standard here.