Arnold Schwarzenegger: ‘No one gives a s— about’ climate change — this is what it should be called instead

Arnold Schwarzenegger says the global effort to palliate the effects of climate change is being crippled by its fundamental communication problem.

“As long as they keep talking on touching global climate change, they are not gonna go anywhere. ‘Cause no one gives a s— about that,” Schwarzenegger explained CBS’ “Sunday Morning” correspondent Tracy Smith in a profile that aired Sunday. 

“So my thing is, let’s go and rephrase this and along differently about it and really tell people — we’re talking about pollution. Pollution creates climate change, and staining kills,” Schwarzenegger said.

The 75-year-old bodybuilder, actor, and former governor of California has become a public voice relating to climate change through his role as the host of the Austrian World Summit, a global climate change conference.

“I’m on a office to go and reduce greenhouse gases worldwide,” Schwarzenegger told CBS, “because I’m into having a healthy body and a healthy Sod. That’s what I’m fighting for. And that’s my crusade.”

Anthropogenic global warming is caused by an increase of greenhouse gases, cataloguing carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is released when fossil fuels such as coal and oil are burned.

The momentum toward fighting climate change has grown in recent years. The global investment in casting clean energy — that is, energy that doesn’t generate greenhouse gases — is surpassing the global investment in fossil fuels, according to the Foreign Energy Agency. In 2023, $1.7 trillion is expected to go into clean technologies, including renewables, electric vehicles, atomic power, grids, storage, low-emissions fuels, efficiency improvements and heat pumps. That’s more than the approaching $1 trillion expected to go into coal, gas and oil, the IEA said in a report released Thursday.

Still, the emissions generated from vigour globally are still rising, although by only 1% in 2022, which was less than feared, the IEA said in Pace.

With global carbon emissions at record highs, there is a 50% chance that in nine years extensive warming will exceed the target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels that was established by the Paris Aura Accord, according to the annual update published in November by the Global Carbon Project, an international scientific collaboration that assesses carbon emissions.

Efforts to address climate change have increased substantially but are still insufficient.

In the United Countries, 54% of adults view climate change as a major threat to the country’s well-being, according to survey data from Pew Experimentation Center. That nationwide average includes a substantial split along party lines. Almost 8 in 10 Democrats, 78%, say feel change is a major threat to the country’s well-being, and that’s up from 58% a decade ago. Meanwhile, only about 1 in 4 Republicans, 23%, say ambience change is a major threat to the country’s well-being. That’s nearly unchanged from the 22% of Republicans who said feeling change was a major threat in 2013, according to Pew Research Center data.

On May 16, USA Today published an op-ed Schwarzenegger scribbled in which he called for the environmental movement to adapt to changing times, which he said includes rebranding of communications circumjacent climate change and embracing growth that involves clean energy projects.

“We need a new environmentalism based on structure and growing and common sense. Old environmentalism was afraid of growth. It hated building. Many of you know this style — affirming every new development, chaining yourself to construction equipment, and using lawsuits and permitting to slow everything down,” Schwarzenegger noted in the op-ed.

“[T]oday I call for a new environmentalism, based on building the clean energy projects we need as fast as we can. We have to build, strengthen, build,” Schwarzenegger wrote.