'60 Minutes': Gov. Schwarzenegger for climate change Video

'60 Minutes': Gov. Schwarzenegger for climate change Video Transcript

>> President elect Obama is thirty days from office, and for a window on his future, turn west for a moment to a chief executive who's already up to his neck in the nation's troubles. This month Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger warned of financial Armageddon as California faced a potential forty billion dollar deficit that threatened jobs, roads, schools, and public safety. At the same time, he's pushing some of the world's toughest environmental laws to make California a leader on climate change. The governor agreed to take us along during his most challenging times. How does he deal with it all? Well what would you expect a former action hero to say?

>> The more difficult it gets, the more joy I find in it. Because it's just great to figure out all the ways of bringing people together, and shaping policy. But to get it done, to get there is always a long process. But when you get it done, it's very satisfying.

>> Maybe it was acting, when we met Schwarzenneger at the capital he'd just declared a state of emergency. His budget plan had touched off a political firestorm, which of course in California would be accompanied by a real one. This Los Angeles neighborhood burned to ash, evidence to Schwarzenneger that even in these times, the greatest threat is climate change.

>> And it all happened so fast that they couldn't save one single one of those homes. Over five hundred homes here were destroyed within hours.

>> You know, there's been a lot of research that suggests that there are more fires, and there are hotter fires because the fire season has been extended by climate change.

>> Well we have been doing some research on that, and we have seen the changes. We don't have a fire season any more, it starts in the beginning of the year and goes all year round. And so it's created of course big challenges.

>> When someone says to you that climate change is theoretical, where's the harm, you say what?

>> I always say well there were people were debating if the world is a globe, they thought for a long time it was flat, and there's still people that think that it's flat. And those are people that still live in the stone age.

>> Schwarzenneger wants to revolutionize energy with aggressive limits on greenhouse gases. In a little more than ten years, a third of California power is supposed to flow from renewables like solar, and he wants to cut tailpipe emissions 30% in eight years.

>> In this moment of economic emergency across the country, isn't this the wrong time to try to switch the way America uses energy?

>> I think that there's never the wrong time, there's always the right time. I argue the opposite, because we have seen the industries that are performing well in California, even right now in this economic decline [inaudible] technology. It's very spectacular to see those manufacturers coming up to me and saying our business is booming, while there's an economic decline. So green technology is where it's at.

>> He'd like to turn greener faster, but he's been fighting the Bush White House, and ironically, tangling with environmentalists.

>> You can't build a solar power plant in the Mojave Desert in California because there's concern about an endangered squirrel.

>> Well first of all let me just say that the Mojave Desert is the best place to have a solar field, because it's the most sun, you have sun all year round, it's the best place. But there are some that want to hold it up because they think that it would endanger some animal life. That is going overboard, because the environmentalists are the first ones to say yes, we need to remove more energy, we should get rid of you know, using our energy from coal and from natural gas, and all those kind of things. But then when you say okay, let's [inaudible], let's build it, whoa whoa whoa, hold up, not so fast.

>> And when he tried to impose those tailpipe emissions, president Bush's EPA administrator said no.

>> I could tell in his eyes that he did not believe in it, that we would never get it, that he would create every obstacle, and administration just had no interest in it.

>> So Schwarzenneger sued the administration.

>> What we wanted to do is just say look America, the United States is not doing the right thing, and is not moving the [inaudible] forward, and is really trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or have an energy policy, or an environmental policy. So therefore we as a state are forced to create our own.

>> He went as far as to create his own foreign policy. Last month Schwarzenneger held a world summit on climate change.

>> Yes, our revolution now does have soldiers, and it's spreading around the globe. [ applause ]

>> He did what Washington would not do, he signed an emissions declaration with government officials from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, India, and China. Then he took the delegates to the LA auto show, where they were no doubt impressed with the horsepower of his celebrity.

>> We're gonna look at some of the green cars.

>> He owned the room, but in a sense he was behind enemy lines. The big three auto makers sued Schwarzenneger to stop cuts in tailpipe emissions. They lost, and he was here to grill them about their alternative fuel cars.

>> And it's all electric?

>> All electric, yeah.

>> I have been in Detroit in 2000, and I've talked to the car manufacturers then to put hydrogen engines in the cars and to start experimenting. And they said to me then what this would take, five to ten years to do something like that. Well that time has come now, where are the cars.

>> When you came out in California with your stricter emission standards, you know there were billboards all over Michigan that said Arnold to Detroit, drop dead.

>> Right, that's true. That was the best free publicity I could get. But actually I was not saying Arnold to Detroit drop dead, I was just saying get off your butt. ^M00:06:15 Okay, this is the Hummer.

>> Not many people know that Schwarzenneger personally invented the civilian Hummer. The maker of the military version told him that it could never be made street legal, so Schwarzenneger bought one and spent a hundred thousand dollars of his money to show that it could be done. Schwarzenneger launched the brand that is the very symbol of greenhouse gas gluttoning.

>> So it runs on cooking oil?

>> Yeah, exactly. You can literally go up to a restaurant and get the cooking oil.

>> Now he's reinvented the vehicle with green that is more than skin deep. He has one variation that runs partly on hydrogen, and this one has an engine modified to run on bio-fuel.

>> I mean it runs basically on anything, anything natural.

>> His point is that trying to chase Americans out of their big cars, what he calls guilt trip environmentalism, has failed.

>> And my point was it's no, no, people keep all the stuff that you like. But change the technologies. So I started really pushing that agenda in a positive way. Look at the great things that we can do. We can turn this whole thing around. The damage that we have created over the last hundred years, we can undo that.

>> His have it all philosophy leads some critics to say that the governor sees green through rose colored glasses, that he tends to underplay the challenges involving cost and technology. Our drive ended where Schwarzenneger began, Venice Beach, where the body builders go. The cops came out with a picture that hangs in their station from back in the day when the future governor was Mister Universe five times, and Mister Olympia seven.

>> Those were the days.

>> Good old days, exactly, yeah.

>> And he had a few tips, which were less about weight lifting than finding clever ways to plough through obstacles.

>> Why so much weight?

>> I usually do seventy fives.

>> When you do it for the cameras you do only fifty, so you - [ laughter ] You take it easy, you don't kill yourself.

>> Is that the trick?

>> Oh yeah, absolutely. I remember when I did this scene in Stay Hungry, the squats with Sally Field watching there, and I had to do it over and over again, and I had two hundred and twenty five pounds on it. I learned very quickly, put on wooden plates.

>> You're not telling me that's what you did in the movie.

>> No, no, not me. [ laughter ]

>> This is Schwarzenneger's fortieth anniversary in America. Venice Beach is in a sense where he came ashore.

>> So this what you see here was exactly the same way forty years ago.

>> When you first came out here in sixty eight, what did you think of America?

>> You know, I felt that if there is such a thing as a before life and an afterlife, that definitely my before life I was an American. Because when I arrived here, when I got off the plane I felt like I'm at home.

>> But now home is in trouble. California is the foreclosure capital. Unemployment is above 8%. The governor proposed to close that budget deficit, half with tax increases, and half with budget cuts, but both republicans and democrats opposed it. When we sat down at the capital he had just left the legislative leadership, and he seemed in no mood. Before we got settled, I was worried that the last thing he wanted to do was talk to us.

>> I'm not sure that meeting went all that well, you seemed pretty preoccupied, got the Terminator look on your face.

>> [inaudible] psyching out, doesn't work.

>> When we got going, I asked about that morning's editorial in that most republican of opinion pages.

>> Did you see the Wall Street Journal editorial page today?

>> Yes.

>> Savage, savage. They said you were taxing and spending this beautiful state to ruin, to use their words. What do you think when you read that?

>> I think this is part of the job, that you have people way on the left that will attack you for making cuts, you will have people way on the right that will attack you for your spending.

>> If you read between the lines in the Wall Street Journal editorial, it's essentially asking what kind of republican are you.

>> For me, the most important thing is when I make a decision is what is best for the people of California, and what is best for our economy, what's best for the state, not what is best for my party. I'm not a party servant, I'm a public servant.

>> Schwarzenneger likes to call his way post-partisan, and he just campaigned successfully for a controversial reform that makes traditionally democratic or republican legislative seats more competitive at election time. But his approval rating has dropped from 60% two years ago to 40% now. Still that's better than the legislature gets, 21%. Running California means running the eighth largest economy in the world. And with two years left as governor, Schwarzenneger will soon have to find an encore. Being born in Austria would seem to disqualify him from the next political step.

>> Well you're a man of no small ambition. If the constitution was changed, you'd like to be president, wouldn't you?

>> Absolutely. I think that I'm always a person that looks for the next big goal. And I love challenges. I always set goals that are so high that are almost impossible to achieve. Because then you're always hungry for climbing and climbing, because it's always interesting, the climb is always interesting. When you get there, you just have to pick another goal.

>> He's already won over the president elect to his environmental goals, but now he still has to head off that budget disaster, to find middle ground the no one else can see, and keep up the appearance that the climb is a joy.

>> People think that show business is in Hollywood, but really I think Reagan was absolutely right. If he wouldn't have had the training in acting, this would have been a very difficult job. And I think that's what it is, that's reality. [ ticking ]