This is the man who - as governor of California - in 2006 enacted a landmark climate change bill, the California Global Warming Solutions Act, which established greenhouse gas emission targets for the state.
And his message applies to environmental activists too, calling on campaigners not to try to block development as a solution to climate change, but to push for a different kind. Energy Secretary Grant Shapps boasted last weekend that "we're ahead of the game because of the level of renewables that we've got coming into our system right now".
The statistics they published this week about what's needed by 2030 illustrate that in a pretty jaw-dropping way. They calculate the UK needs:Four times as much solar power and onshore windLabour's shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband accuses the government of a "failure of ambition and action" when it comes to clean power.