LA Weekly

It's true that Mr. Schwarzenegger signed the Million Solar Roofs bill. And today his campaign has also sent out an email dispatch taking challenger Phil Angelides to task for "running from his environmental record."

But he also showed today that when it comes to the less sexy and flashy environmental decisions -- you know, like protecting people from the things that actually kill them, even it costs businesses a trivial amount of cash -- he's the girliest man of all.

California State Senator Alan Lowenthal's container fee bill would have imposed a $30 fee per 20-foot container moving through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. It would have generated $500 million annually to be split three ways: To the state air board for cleaning up the polluted air that fells 2,400 port-adjacent residents every year; to the ports themselves for better security; and to the California Transportation Commission to improve rail service.

The bill, SB 927, was just the latest incarnation of a law everybody but the shipping industry itself believes makes sense: It would have made the shippers themselves pay for the environmental and infrastructural consequences of their bustling trade with Asia.

Today, however, the governor vetoed that bill. "It is very important that any measure that increases fees that impact exporters not have the unintended consequence of negatively impacting the sale and delivery of goods grown and manufactured in California," he wrote.

Never mind that a midsummer survey by the Public Policy Institute showed that nearly three-quarters of Californians believed in tougher pollution rules for shippers even it meant it would cost those businesses more. Never mind that an August study by the Coalition for Clean Air and the Natural Resources Defense Council showed that the container fee would "have very little effect on ship diversion from those ports." Schwarzenegger wasn't listening to the public policy experts, environmentalists or even California residents. He was listening to the international shipping lines who move $260 billion in goods every year through Southern California's dirty ports.

Oh, and by the way, that rumor you heard about Schwarzenegger giving up his Hummers is just that: He's keeping 'em. Not everything Drudge links to is true.

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