Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday he plans to convene an international climate change summit in California in November as a precursor to United Nations discussions on a worldwide accord.
"We will bring government officials to California from around the world from provincial governments in China and India, from European nations, from Australia, Mexico, Canada," Schwarzenegger said Friday at the Commonwealth Club of California. "And the goal is very simple: to form a broad international alliance, so that when the Kyoto negotiators start their work in Poland this December they will have our summit as a framework."
The United Nations will hold December meetings in Poland to lay the foundation for a new global climate change agreement once the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012. The U.N. intends to finalize a new accord next year in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The Governors Global Climate Summit will be held Nov. 18 and 19 in Los Angeles, according to Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear, who said formal invitations have not yet been sent to leaders. It is unclear how much influence this event would have on the Poland conference, which is expected to attract 8,000 participants from around the world.
The Republican governor appeared at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco to promote a law he signed two years ago to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020.
The governor on Friday repeated his stance that the federal government has been "asleep at the wheel" on the climate-change issue. He said he would prefer that the U.S. adopt a national greenhouse-gas emissions standard, but he has tried to organize a patchwork of state agreements because the federal government has not done enough. The U.S. has never ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
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