Arnold Schwarzenegger has a message for environmentalists who despair at the approach of President Donald Trump's administration: “Stop whining and get to work.”
The new US administration has taken an ax to Biden-era environmental ambitions, rolled back landmark regulations, withdrawn climate project funding and instead bolstered support for oil and gas production in the name of an “American energy dominance” agenda.
Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor of California, has devoted time to environmental causes since leaving political office in 2011.
He said Tuesday he keeps hearing from environmentalists and policy experts lately who ask, “What is the point of fighting for a clean environment when the government of the United States says climate change is a hoax and coal and oil is the future?”
Schwarzenegger told the Austrian World Summit in Vienna, an event he helps organize, that he responds: “Stop whining and get to work.”
He pointed to examples of local and regional governments and companies taking action, including his own administration in California, and argued 70% of pollution is reduced at the local or state level.
“Be the mayor that makes buses electric; be the CEO who ends fossil fuel dependence; be the school that puts (up) solar roofs," he said.
“You can't just sit around and make excuses because one guy in a very nice White House on Pennsylvania Avenue doesn't agree with you,” he said, adding that attacking the president is “not my style” and he doesn't criticize any president when outside the US.
“I know that the people are sick and tired of the whining and the complaining and the doom and gloom,” Schwarzenegger said. “The only way we win the people's hearts and minds is by showing them action that makes their lives better.”
