Leadership: Alaska’s ex-governor asks a question we’d like answered: Why is California’s current governor pushing the same policies in Copenhagen that helped drive his state into record deficits and unemployment?

The movie series that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a household name involved cyborgs traveling through time to alternately try to destroy or save one John Connor, who would grow up to be the leader of the resistance against a race of machines that ruled the planet. Prominent in the series was his tough cookie of a mom, Sarah Connor.

Another Sarah has taken the lead in another resistance against another group determined to destroy the planet in order to save it in the name of climate change. She has crossed political swords with California’s governor, the self-styled “climate action hero for the globe” who finds himself in Copenhagen seeking a “planetary transformation.”

“There is a statue of the Little Mermaid in the harbor based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale,” Schwarzenegger said at the conference based on another fairy tale. “But when I was a boy in Austria, my favorite tale was the Ugly Duckling because it was a tale of transformation that spoke to me inside.” We’re not making this up.

Acting on that inspiration, Schwarzenegger said: “The desire and hope and desperate need for planetary transformation is what brought me here. Is it a dream, a fairy tale, a false hope? If not, how can we make it real?”

Well, if we close our eyes, click our heels and follow Schwarzenegger’s lead, we just might find ourselves back in a preindustrial Kansas. Just pay no attention to the climate research hoaxers behind the curtain at the University of East Anglia.

Along the yellow brick road from Hollywood to Copenhagen, Schwarzenegger took time to question Palin’s stance on global warming — that it is happening, but to a beneficial and not disastrous degree, with the Little Mermaid or polar bears not in any danger of drowning. Palin opposes cap-and-trade, as do we, as an unnecessary and ineffective solution to a non-problem that will transfer our wealth to the Hugo Chavezes and Robert Mugabes of the world.

“You have to ask: What was she trying to accomplish?” said Gov. Schwarzenegger. “Is she really interested in this subject or is she interested in her career and in winning the (Republican) nomination (for president)? You have to take all these things with a grain of salt.”

Not taking these remarks lying down, Palin responded on her Facebook page: “Why is Gov. Schwarzenegger pushing for the same sorts of policies in Copenhagen that have helped drive his state into record deficits and unemployment?” Good question.

“We in California do not wait for Washington or Beijing or Kyoto,” Schwarzenegger said in Copenhagen. “We are moving forward and making great progress.” California has been a leader, all right — right over the climate cliff. The only drowning that’s been going on is taxpayers in red ink.

A recent study by the California Business Roundtable shows that Assembly Bill 32, modeled on the failed Kyoto Protocol and signed by Schwarzenegger in 2006, has helped contribute to California’s precipitous economic decline.

The study estimates that AB 32, when fully implemented, will cost the state some $71.46 billion annually. The cost to consumers will be $149.2 billion, and small businesses will pay $182.64 billion. The once-golden state will lose more than 1.1 million jobs — over 3% of the state’s population.

The San Diego Union-Tribune recently called for a suspension of AB 32, given that state unemployment is at 12.5% and it’s the state’s business climate that needs saving. It noted a report observing that while “green jobs” had grown 36% statewide since 1995, they constituted only 1% of all state jobs. Imagine the economy of the entire United States shackled by such legislation. We won’t have the luxury of saying it’s only a movie.

Read at: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=515705