Global Warming Action Heroes

Former Vice President Al Gore, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had a unifying message for the largest summit on global warming ever convened: Do something. And do it now.

The meeting in New York -- one of three key meetings on climate change this week in the U.S. -- is the primer for the upcoming U.N. meeting in Bali, where world leaders are expected to agree to a new program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. Kyoto, seen as a flawed first step, was not signed by the United States or Australia -- two top polluters -- and required no cuts in emissions from developing nations like China -- which surpassed the United States as the top polluter this year -- and India.

President Bush will have his own talks later this week with the leaders of those top polluting nations, and the goal there is country-by-country "aspirational goals." Unlike the U.N. initiative, there would be no requirement to meet those goals. Critics fear that the parallel talks will derail real action from the U.N., given that many countries will follow the U.S. lead.

The Axis of Action -- Gore, Schwarzenegger and Ban -- urged the world's leaders to take decisive action that leads to real results. In that, their chorus struck a discordant tone, but Bush has never been one to harmonize when he's humming along.

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