Lost in the press clippings of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s vapid executive order to boost the amount of renewable energy that California’s utilities offer, is the question of what happens to this unenforceable executive order when this governor terms out (executive orders expire when the governor who orders them leaves office).

At the press conference to announce the order, the chair of the California Air Resources Board, Mary Nichols, offered this analysis:

“I think any new governor is likely to want to continue that program,” Nichols said.

Obviously Nichols isn’t paying attention to the California Republican Party primary, in which it seems that no position is too backwards for the two main candidates: Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman.  

In an op-ed that ran yesterday in the San Jose Mercury News , Whitman signaled to the world – Nichols included – exactly where she stands on issues like renewable energy. Whitman:

With this ongoing economic crisis, the governor has the ability to issue an executive order putting a moratorium on most AB32-related rules. I urge him to do so. And if he does not, I will issue that order on my first day as governor.

Hear that, Mary? Not only is progress on renewable energy in real jeopardy if someone like Whitman becomes governor (not that the governor’s phony executive order means anything anyway except for being one in a series of executive tweets that sound nice), but even AB 32 – the bill YOU are in charge of implementing – is at risk if one of these two becomes governor.

While most media outlets’ coverage of this issue has helped feed the implicit assumption that an executive proclamation is the same as a law, the Los Angeles Times at least gets to the real point in an editorial that has more to do with prisons:

Perhaps it’s not surprising that, in this environment, Schwarzenegger seems to be taking on the characteristics of a dictator. On Tuesday, he rejected the Legislature’s plan to promote renewable energy and said he’d impose his own by executive fiat. He’s on surer legal ground when it comes to the prisons because his actions will be backed by the federal court. But it’s dismaying to watch the state’s democratic procedures break down so thoroughly.

Amen, brothers and sisters.