Celebrate Earth Day with Deep Green Thoughts, Courtesy of Arnold Schwarzeneggar

Excellent tidbits from a speech by the Governator before the Council on Foreign Relations last week.

Topics addressed: bodybuilding, Kirk Douglas, biceps, prohibitionists, guilt, seesaws, muscles cars, Hummers, teary Native Americans, Michigan death threat, car acceleration, cell phones, Jacuzzies, the fringe, political penguins.

"...so I’m talking here today about the environment... And what is amazing about this is because three and a half years ago when I ran for governor I was followed around by environmental protestors with signs. You know, they didn’t like my Hummers, they didn’t like my SUVs or anything. As a matter of fact, they didn’t even believe when I talked about that I will protect the environment when I become governor. And now here we are, three and a half years later, I’m on the cover of Newsweek as one of the big environmentalists. So I say, only in America."

Now, I know this is a speech about the environment, but let me first talk about bodybuilding, which is another passion of mine. Because bodybuilding used to have a very sketchy image, as you know, and as a matter of fact there were a lot of people that were working out in the old days and they never admitted that they were working out because they didn’t want to be associated with that sport. As a matter of fact, a lot of the big Hollywood celebrities—Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Kirk Douglas—they all were working out with weights, but they never would publicly acknowledge it because they didn’t want to be associated with the gymnasiums that were like dungeons for weirdos, and for fanatics and so on.

So we knew that we had to change the image, and we did. We consciously changed the image. The book came out, Pumping Iron, and then the movie, the documentary of Pumping Iron came out. And then I started writing books on bodybuilding for men and for women, for children and all this, and started promoting and promoting. And eventually the image of bodybuilding changed so that now you literally could go anywhere in the world and you will find a gymnasium. As a matter of fact, you can go to any gymnasium and you will find ordinary people talking about their lats and their biceps and their abs and their body fat and all those kinds of things.

And so the reason why I’m mentioning this is because, like bodybuilders, environmentalists were also thought of as being kind of weird and strange and fanatics, the kind of serious tree huggers, as you know. Environmentalists were no fun. As a matter of fact, a lot of times you would think of those environmentalists as like prohibitionists at a fraternity party. But you know, someone showed me the other day a cartoon, a very funny one, that shows a salesman in a showroom talking to this couple. And he’s pointing at the car, and he says, “It runs on a conventional gasoline powered engine, and then when it senses a little guilt it switches over to battery power.”

And it’s very funny, but the strange thing about it is that there’s a lot of truth to that, because for too long the environmental movement has been powered by guilt. But I believe that that is about to switch over. It’s about to switch because it’s going to be powered not by guilt, but by something much more positive, by something much more dynamic, by something much more capable of bringing about real big change.

You know the kind of guilt that I am talking about, the smokestacks belching pollution that are powering our big screen TVs, or powering our Jacuzzis, or in my case, flying me around with private jets. Well, it is too bad that we can’t all live as simple lives as monks in Tibet, but you know something? It’s not going to happen.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t think that any movement has ever made it, or has ever made much progress based on guilt, because guilt is passive, guilt is inhibiting, and guilt is defensive. You remember the commercial a number of years ago of the Native American that has seen what we have done to the environment, and then all of a sudden a tear runs down his cheek. Well, you know something? That approach did not work, it was disastrous. Successful movements are all built on passion, not on guilt.

Now, do I believe that what California does and the standards that we set will really solve global warming? No, of course not. What we are doing is applying leverage that at some point the whole environmental thing will tip. It’s like a seesaw. You walk up to it and then eventually it will tip down to the other side. California is so big, California is so powerful, that what we do has consequences. Now, even though when you look at a globe, California is just a little spot, but the kind of power of influence that we have on the rest of the world makes us look like a huge continent.

Now, there’s a billboard that is out in Michigan that accuses me of costing the car industry 85 billion dollars because of our carbon emission standards that we have set in California. The billboard says, “Arnold to Michigan: Drop dead.” But that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, “Arnold to Michigan: Get off your butt, join us.”

We have a car company that is called Tesla Motors. I don’t know if you all have heard of Tesla Motors. It’s a really sexy , it’s called the Tesla Roadster. It’s 100 percent electric. Now, I say to myself, why is it that the car company that has built their first car, and is new, is already building a car that has zero emissions, and Detroit cannot do it, so they’re falling behind? But that car, I test drove it. It goes from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds, it drives 130 miles an hour, and it goes 250 miles on a charge, and then it only takes 3 1/2 hours to recharge the car. It cost 100,000 dollars, this car, and it’s so popular it sold out immediately. And now the second version they’re building, the cost dropped down to 50,000 dollars. So it’s a huge, huge success story.

And economics can tell us where this is heading. It’s the same thing as with the cell phones. I remember 20 years ago I bought a cell phone—well, it was kind of a radio phone, really—it cost me 1,600 dollars. Then a few years later is was 1,200 dollars, then it was 700 dollars. I just bought my daughter a cell phone just recently. That cell phone cost less than 90 dollars. So the costs have come down, have dropped down so much, that now almost everyone owns a cell phone, and the same thing will happen with the environmental technologies on cars.

Some of you may have seen the cable TV show Pimp My Ride. Now, maybe not, but it’s a real cool show. What it does is, on this show, it takes old junk cars that you’re supposed to junk and destroy and get off the road, and make them into lowriders and into muscle cars. Now, my teenage son loves watching this show, he loves watching it every time. I watch it with him sometimes. As a matter of fact, I recently did a segment of the show that will air on Earth Day. And the reason why it will air on Earth Day is because we took this very cutting edge show that everyone loves, the young people love, and added something very environmentally hip to it. What we did was, we took a 1965 Impala and we made it into a lowrider, but not an ordinary lowrider. We dropped in an 800 horsepower engine that goes from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds. I mean, really very powerful.

That is what you have to do. You have to make things cool, you have to make things sexy and cutting edge. And so we don’t have to take away the cars from the people, the SUVs, the Hummers, and the muscle cars. No. That formula is a formula for failure. Instead, what we have to do is make those muscle cars and those SUVs and those Hummers more environmentally muscular. That is what we have to do. This is why now one of my Hummers runs on biofuel, and the other one of my Hummers runs on hydrogen fuel. Zero emissions on hydrogen fuel. And GM built that car for me. It’s, as a matter of fact, traveling around the world right now.

Now, the new environmental movement is not about guilt, it’s not about fringe, it’s not about being overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem. It is about mainstream momentum. Like I said, in bodybuilding, you have to change the image so it’s mainstream, so everyone wants to get involved in that movement.

Now, finally, let me say something about politics, what politics plays, and what a big part it plays in the tipping point. If you are against taking action on greenhouse gases and carbon emissions, your political base will melt away as surely as the polar icecaps, I can guarantee you that. You will become a political penguin on a smaller and small ice floe, drifting out to sea. Good-bye, my little friend.