In a move more notable for style than substance, California's governor and Britain's prime minister agreed to pursue plans for developing market-based greenhouse gas reduction strategies. The July 31 climate action agreement pointedly ignored the federal government. "As a state we will move forward" without the federal government "because we know it's the right thing to do," said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The agreement was sponsored by the U.K.'s Climate Action Group and pushed by the U.S. Business Roundtable. Chief executive officers from a dozen companies, including Tom King, Pacific Gas & Electric president, and John Bryson, Edison International chief executive officer, met with Prime Minister Tony Blair and Schwarzenegger. The deal touted does not set up a cap-and-trade system, although Schwarzenegger's staff said they are working with the author of AB 32, legislation that would create a market cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases within the state. "Several of us from the administration and [Assembly speaker Fabian] Núñez's staff are committed to negotiating a bill the governor will sign," said administration spokesperson Adam Mendelsohn. What the two did agree to was using market-based mechanisms "that will better enable the carbon market(s) to accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy." In addition, the agreement cited sharing technology developed in California and the U.K. - specifically this state's "hydrogen highway" research and Britain's experience with renewable fuels and clean coal technologies. "This is not a treaty. It's too premature for that," said Mendelsohn. Britain, a country whose industry was powered by dirty coal, creating a Dickensian-style haze, produces "something like 2 percent of greenhouse gases," Blair stated earlier this year. The country has a goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent in 2010. California is the world's 7th-largest economy and was the 12th-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world last year, according to the administration. Schwarzenegger has set carbon dioxide reduction goals but no requirements to ensure that they are met. As recently as April, he insisted that regulatory action be "slow" and "deliberate" to avoid scaring businesses (Circuit, April 14, 2006). Yet global warming seems ever more compelling as an environmental and economic threat to the state. "There will be 70 to 90 percent reduced snowpack" in the state, said California Environmental Protection Agency secretary Linda Adams