Arnold's 'Mean Green Machine'

"He's put the Hummers in storage. He's told friends he was deeply impressed by Al Gore's new global-warming movie, 'An Inconvenient Truth.' And as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hit the campaign trail last week, he had a new look: a bright green bus emblazoned with a mural of Yosemite National Park."

Schwarzenegger touts his "Hydrogen Highway" and California's law to impose strict limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, making it a model for the nation. "You have to have a vision of a clean California," he said. "And then go out and build it."

"In California, where 87 percent of voters say that environmental issues matter in choosing a candidate, that's a smart course. "We're about bringing people together," Schwarzenegger's wife, Maria Shriver, said. "Democrats, Republicans, independents, greens. We're the only state in America doing that."

Could an energy initiative play a decisive role in determining the election?

"Environmental issues occupy an unusually prominent role on the California ballot this fall. Tens of millions of dollars will be spent on the California Clean Air Campaign, a ballot measure that would impose a wellhead tax on oil companies operating in California and divert the money—an estimated $4 billion—to finance alternative-energy development. The measure has already attracted nationwide opposition from the oil industry."