Environment Forum

from Mario Di Simine:

Change must start from grassroots, Schwarzenegger tells COP15

The COP15 conference on climate change will be a success even if no deal comes out of it, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Tuesday in Copenhagen.

“It depends on what your definition of a deal is,” Schwarzenegger told the media. “The important thing is to move the agenda forward.”

The governor is in Copenhagen to participate in a number of events on the sidelines of the main conference. Before meeting with the media, Schwarzenegger delivered a speech to an audience of mostly non-governmental organization members on California’s climate change efforts and the important of leading from the grassroots level.

“The important issue that I’m here to address is to not go and just rely solely on the federal government and national governments,” he said afterward. “All great movements start from grassroots level.”

California leads the United States in its legal mandate to cut greenhouse gases that warm the planet, from auto mileage standards adopted by the rest of the nation to green building codes.

Schwarzenegger said the leaders in Copenhagen needed to listen more to “ordinary folks” and when asked if he really expected Africa to listen to California he said California has already been a leader in the area, having formed partnerships with other states, Canadian provinces and Chinese provinces to affect change from the ground up.

Tesla hoping slow and steady will win the electric car race

More than 1,200 people have put in orders for their own Tesla Roadster, the all-electric sports car with an eye-popping price tag of $100,000. 

So far, only 27 have been delivered to customers.

Tesla disclosed this latest number in a press release on Tuesday, surprising those of us who remember the company’s chairman, Elon Musk, receiving his car in April.

That’s because for several months, the electric car maker only started production on three or four vehicles a week, according to spokeswoman Rachel Konrad.

In July, Tesla President and CEO Ze’ev Drori told customers that Tesla had “broken the logjam” and was finally delivering cars to its customers.

“You know of course the saying ‘Good things are worth waiting for’… undoubtedly we were trying the truism of this adage longer than warranted,” Drori wrote on the company’s blog on July 12. 

The Silicon Valley automaker originally had planned to start delivering the cars last year, but the company has since been plagued by production delays.