"It's not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact that the globe is warming," said the Republican elder statesman.

While his Republican colleagues continue to dither about climate change and search for the best ways to do nothing about it, elder statesman George Shultz is bucking the party establishment.

In a recent interview with the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, Shultz expressed his belief in taking action on climate change, explained his support for a carbon tax and gushed about his all-electric Nissan LEAF.

I have my electric car running on electricity from the sun, which costs me nothing and there is plenty of it here. So, I'm driving on sunshine. Take that, Ahmadinejad!

The 91-year-old Shultz, a stalwart in the Republican ranks for decades, was secretary of State in the Reagan administration; secretary of Treasury, secretary of Labor and headed the Office of Management in the Nixon administration; and now leads Hoover Institution's Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy at Stanford University and chairs the advisory boards of Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy Initiative.

Shultz's turn to the 'radical middle' on the political hot buttons of energy and climate shows that the elder statesman is not exactly slowing down.

And to this effort I say, go get 'em George.

Photo: U.S. Department of State on Flickr