Friday, December 07, 2018

Rejuvinator

I remember a time when I flinched at the idea of having Arnold Schwarzenegger for a governor. I can remember groaning at his acceptance speech, when he insisted that his administration wasn't just going to "think outside the box, we're going to blow up those boxes." This was an election in California that included such other impressive candidates as former child star Gary Coleman and former porn star Mary Carey. We elected the Governator.
Did I mention Arnold Schwarzenegger is a Republican? We re-elected him three years later. How did this happen in the bluest of blue states?
Maybe it was the same energy that eventually brought Donald Trump to the Oval Office. Maybe California was test-driving the new reality before it actually hit the market a decade in advance. Or perhaps there was a sense that all those signs - the infidelity, the Humvee, the allegations of groping - were all part of a smokescreen to cover up the tree-hugger inside.
"If we would've never started in that direction and used other technology, we'd be much better off. The biggest evil is fossil fuels: it's coal, it's gasoline, it's the natural gas," he told U.N. climate delegates at a conference in Poland. He said he wishes he could travel back in time like the cyborg he played in The Terminator so he could stop fossil fuels from being used. Schwarzenegger later told The Associated Press he has converted his signature Humvee trucks to run on hydrogen, electricity and biofuel and only allows himself to eat meat three days a week. "I mean, maybe it tastes delicious, but I think we should think then and there before we eat about the world and about the pollution," he said. "So I discontinued eating meat four days a week. And eventually, maybe we'll go to seven days." What happened to the Governator? There must be some sort of science fiction silliness at work. Did Green Zombies come down and fill his head full of these radical new ideas? Some sort of ecologically safe body swap with a member of the Sierra Club? Or maybe an old dog can learn new tricks, and we should applaud this re-education. We're glad he's back. 

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