It's Not Easy, Being Green (Enough)

Here's a puzzle for you to solve on this fine LORD's day. I will supply a quote from a news story with the particulars blanked out and you try to guess who it's talking about.

Okay, here goes:

[BLANK] Governor [BLANK]'s administration is set to release a plan to combat global warming that includes recommendations to boost gas prices and require industries to report their greenhouse gas emissions.

The proposal has both business groups and environmental advocates gearing up for a fight "that could have profound national environmental and political implications,” the [BLANK] reports.

Said Ned Helme, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Clean Air Policy: "What you're considering in [BLANK] is much broader than anything being discussed in other states - it's very significant.”

[BLANK] instructed a team of administration officials, led by state EPA head Alan Lloyd, to investigate how greenhouse gas emissions could be cut. A draft of the team’s report was published in December and the final version is expected to be released by the end of February.

The draft report listed dozens of options, including requiring farmers to change the way they handle animal manure, increasing the use of wind and solar power to generate electricity, rewarding companies that reduce emissions, and ordering companies such as electricity generators, oil refineries and cement makers to report their greenhouse gas emissions.

Industries are already regulated regarding sulfur dioxide and several other emissions, but don't face the same controls on greenhouse gases.

The proposal would also call for a new charge on gas of less than a penny per gallon to fund research into alternative fuels and other ways to make cars more fuel efficient.

Alright, that should be plenty of a hint. So who is the mystery governor? You have sixty seconds....

{Jeopardy musak}

Time's up. What is your answer?

Actually, if you needed anything over six seconds then you probably aren't one of our readers to begin with. Who else besides Arnold Schwarzenegger has spent the past few months dashing to the left across the issue board as fast as his muscular legs can carry him? Sheesh, just listen to this veritable litmus test being imposed upon him by the greenstremists:

[E]nvironmentalists "will watch closely this year to see if Schwarzenegger is willing to champion changes likely to be opposed by some of the governor's big-business allies,” the [San Francisco] Chronicle reports.

Their measuring stick has nothing whatsoever to do with environmentalism or the myth of global warming, but is soley fixated on whether or not, and the degree to which, Ah-nuld betrays his core constituency. If he doesn't screw "big business" to the hilt and beyond, as State Treasurer Phil Angelides, one of his Dem challengers, is pledging to do, then all the RINO pandering in the world won't save him from their rabble-rousing wrath.

Would somebody like to take another stab at explaining to me why the Gollyfornia GOP hasn't excommunicated this man? Even if he could run for POTUS, he's orienting his political operation as if he were building toward a run for the presidency of his native Austria. What Golden State Republicans have to gain from assisting his efforts to get off the governor's mansion couch and back into Maria's bodoir completely escapes me.