The Governator’s finest hour?

It’s never been easy to take Arnold Schwarzenegger’s chitchat about climate change all that seriously, given his ownership of Hummers (see token archive pic, left) and habit of commuting from Los Angeles to Sacramento, via private jet, to carry out duties as Governor of California.

Yet on Sunday night, in the twilight of what many consider a wasted eight years in office, the Governator delivered perhaps the most memorable, and certainly one of the most heartfelt speeches of this or any other recent mid-term election season.

Speaking at a conference in Silicon Valley, he described in detail the underhand efforts of two Texan oil companies to derail his efforts to reduce California’s ludicrous carbon footprint, which despite the virtually endless local supply of clean and free sunlight and wind, is amongst the highest per capita in the world.

The two firms, Valero and Tesoro, have spent tens of millions of dollars on a misleading PR campaign to persuade the Califorrnian electorate to vote on election day in November to effectively abolish a green energy bill.

Schwarzenegger’s robust comments on the murky affair were flagged on MSNBC last night, and deserves to reach a wider audiece. You can catch most of the speech here or watch it below (it begins in earnest at 1.54).

His speech was particularly striking in illustrating how big businesses is already exploiting new laws, approved this year by America’s right-tilting Supreme Court, which allow private companies to pour almost limitless funds into attempting to influence the nation’s elections.

We’ll no doubt her more about this as polling day approaches.

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