The Terminator is a risky guest

Date: 01-06-2007 Posted by: Anabolic Info TeamCanada

There must be something about the merry month of May that makes Canadian politicians who should know better dive headfirst into the celebrity mosh pit.

Not that Arnold Schwarzenegger is an ordinary celebrity. To more than 38 million Californians, he is Governor Schwarzenegger. Still, to fans from his bodybuilding/action film star days, he is Arnie, the Austrian Oak with staunchly Republican roots - or to those with reason to fear him, the celluloid Terminator who morphed with surprising ease into the Governator, environmental crusader.

But then, Bono was no ordinary rock star either. Former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin invited U2's warbler to join him on two occasions, in 2003 and again in May 2004, and look what happened to him. All Martin wanted was a little Irish luster and he ended up with a commitment to pump up Canada's foreign aid to 0.7 per cent of the country's Gross National Income.

Bono warned Martin that he would be "the biggest pain in his ass" if he reneged on foreign aid, which of course Martin did. And as promised, there was Bono in May 2005, a big flashy pain who publicly divulged the PM's office telephone number so that Canadians could personally call and tell Martin what they thought of his betrayal.

At least in one respect Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has learned from Martin's mistake.
Arnie, like Bono, is a potential stick of dynamite, best kept contained. Rather than parade his trophy guest before the irksome media, Harper ordered his brief Wednesday visit with Schwarzenegger be a private affair - a photo opportunity only. Take no questions; give no answers that could light a fuse.

Good thing, too.

How embarrassing if Arnie on the loose had repeated the warning to political leaders that he gave in a speech in early May to the Council on Foreign Relations, an American-based foreign policy think-tank.

"If you are against taking action on greenhouse gases and carbon emissions," said the Governator in a webcast heard around the world, "your political base will melt away as surely as the polar ice caps, I can guarantee you that. You will become a political penguin on a smaller and smaller ice floe, drifting out to sea. Good-bye, my little friend."

Good-bye my little friend? Surely Schwarzenegger would not include Harper and his Conservative government - or goodness, maybe even Canada - on a hit-list of penguin castaways?

What about the Clean Air Act and all those programs the Conservatives have rolled out since polls convinced them they were chickens, if not dinosaurs, on the environment? Just this Monday, Environment Minister John Baird asserted Canada will support a 50-per-cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 at next week's G-8 summit in Germany.

The devil though is in the details. Neither Baird nor Harper will clarify exactly what level would be reduced by half or how they plan to achieve whatever it is they've hidden up their sleeves. Instead of absolute targets on emissions, for instance, they prefer intensity-based goals that would fluctuate according to production rates.

In stark contrast, the governor of America's most populous state has adopted aggressive legislation designed to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent, reducing them to 1990 levels by 2020. Other initiatives in the works include the world's first low-carbon standard for transportation fuels and the construction of a hydrogen highway network from California to British Columbia.

No need to dump your Hummer or SUV; just retrofit them to run on biofuel or hydrogen fuel, like Arnie did. No need for hysterical rants or flow charts cooked to show that keeping up with Kyoto will bankrupt the country; just get with the new economy.

All it takes, according to Schwarzenegger, are mandates, markets and political courage.

"Eventually," he says, "we will look at those countries that produce goods without regard for the environment the same way as we look at countries that produce goods without regard to human rights, such as those who allow sweat shops."

Harper isn't the only one to invite comparison. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says he'd adopt California's tough standards forcing the auto industry to make cars with lower emissions, but he can't without jeopardizing the heart of Ontario's economy.

Arnie has a few choice words for that kind of attitude too. As he told the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto, a billboard in Michigan accuses him of costing the auto industry $85 billion. "The billboard says, 'Arnold to Michigan: Drop dead.' But that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, 'Arnold to Michigan: Get off your butt, join us.'"

After all, says Arnie the Environmental Prophet: "We all know that if they don't make the changes, someone else will."