Cannes: Arnold Schwarzenegger has four Hummers and likes nothing better than getting up at 5am to ride his Harley Davidson to the beach for breakfast.
Yet The Terminator star insists that should not stop him being an environmental evangelist.
“Saving the planet is also about technology,” the former California governor said, putting his foot on a chair and wagging a skull-ringed finger to make his point.
Three of his Hummers run on hydrogen, vegetable oil and bio-diesel and he’s hoping to put an electric engine into the fourth.
“You know one day soon we are going to have hydrogen-fuelled planes. We can get rid of this dirty diesel tomorrow.
“I hate it when environmentalism comes down to ‘you can’t do this and you can’t do that’. There’s a bad habit of shaming, guilt and finger pointing. ‘Don’t smoke this, don’t take a jacuzzi and don’t take a plane.’ Everything’s bad.”
Which is why Arnie is giving it an injection of his legendary pumped-up positive attitude. “We didn’t blame anyone” when Schwarzenegger the young bodybuilding Mr Universe was a pin-up of the “physical fitness movement 40 years ago”, he said. “We didn’t say he’s fat or she’s got a big ass. We celebrated the body.”
Now topping the global RS 20 network of regional leaders he has put together to fight climate change, Schwarzenegger the activist has got behind a new documentary at the Cannes film festival by the son of undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau which he also narrates. Wonders of the Sea 3D will make “people fall in love with the ocean”, he declared.
