US:When Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for governor of California in 2003, environmentalists guffawed at his penchant for driving fuel-guzzling Hummers while pledging to clean up the planet.
After his election, the former bodybuilder and actor converted his vehicles to run on biofuels. Last year the Republican governor signed a law requiring California to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2020, the first legislation of its kind in the US.
Yesterday, he was addressing world leaders at UN headquarters, adding a dash of Hollywood to the largest-ever gathering on climate change. His speech, delivered shortly after UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon's opening remarks, was short, to the point, and in his own particular style. Noting his "great affection for the peoples of the world", Mr Schwarzenegger talked of "something remarkable . . . beginning to stir, something revolutionary, something historic and transformative" in the state he governs.
"California is moving the United States beyond debate and doubt to action. So I urge this body to push its members to action also," Mr Schwarzenegger declared, drawing an unspoken but clear distinction between the state's ground-breaking environmental initiatives and the Bush administration's reluctance to fully recognise the threat of climate change.
Mr Schwarzenegger also called on world leaders to move beyond recrimination over the causes of global warming and concentrate on finding solutions that include both developed and developing countries.
But while true believers such as Mr Schwarzenegger made up the majority of those participating in the conference, there were a few dissenting voices.
One was Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, who told the summit the climate change debate is "one-sided". Mr Klaus featured in a recent $1 million ad campaign with the tagline "global warming is not a crisis", in which he promised to "debunk global warming myths" at the UN conference.
Mr Klaus did not have time to do much debunking during his five-minute speech yesterday but claimed "the risk [ of climate change] is too small and the costs of eliminating it too high".