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 told AFP, 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.
Now on top of the global R20 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. “And if they love it they will protect it,” he said.
“The oceans give us half the food we eat and half the oxygen we breathe and we better protect that. Seven million people die every year because of pollution.”
Even such apocalyptic statistics cannot survive long in the white heat of the Austrian-born star´s can-do charisma.
“Look, we can do it, we can save the planet with people power and positive attitude.
“If you want people to change you got to make them feel good about it.
“I had a very clear vision as a kid of what I was going to do,” he recalled.
“I was going to be a bodybuilding champion, go to America and get into the movies. And I was going to make millions of dollars.”
It all came true, and then some.
“But I never thought I would have the biggest movie of the year with ´Terminator 2´, and that I would be doing comedy or politics.”
Nor has the march of time dimmed his optimism.
Asked about turning 70 in July, Schwarzenegger joked, “Are you asking because you want to send me a birthday gift? I like Montecristos (cigars), No. 2s.”
Schwarzenegger looks a good two decades younger and says his secret is that he “works out every day and I really love my life.
“One month I make a movie, fly to South Africa for a bodybuilding conference, pump up some students and get my eighth honorary degree.