Govind Tekale
Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reveals his break with Donald Trump stemmed from fundamental environmental differences: “The bottom line is he just never believed in it.” The action star-turned-politician argues environmental messaging fails because people don’t understand the term “climate change.” Instead, he suggests focusing on “pollution” instead—a term with immediate health implications most citizens readily grasp, pointing to the “7 million people a year” who die from pollution-related causes.
“When you go down on Fifth Avenue in New York and ask 100 people for a definition of climate change, you will hear 100 different answers,” Schwarzenegger stated during a June 2025 panel with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.
He drew parallels to his fitness career, describing how rebranding “bodybuilding” as “resistance training” helped increase public interest in weight training.
“Now we have gyms in many hotels, fire stations, police stations, universities, and sports teams—everyone is working out,” Schwarzenegger noted in the panel. “It’s all because we changed the language.”
Schwarzenegger highlighted how Republican predecessors advanced environmental protection without climate terminology. He noted that Ronald Reagan, as California governor, signed legislation creating the Air Resources Board in California in 1967.
“President Nixon right after that created the EPA in Washington… under the auspices of ‘we got to get rid of pollution’—not climate change,” Schwarzenegger pointed out during the panel discussion.
California’s environmental campaigns centered on health impacts rather than abstract climate concepts, according to Schwarzenegger.
“We showed a commercial to the people on television of a child with an inhaler and then eventually passing out,” Schwarzenegger recounted. “This is what we do to our children because of pollution. That’s what the ad said.”
He criticized even climate-friendly politicians for ineffective messaging: “I had the president of the United States going on and give a speech at the State of the Union address. It was Biden and he says, ‘Let me talk a little bit about climate.’ What are you talking about? Why not just say how we have to reduce pollution?”
In the CNN interview, Schwarzenegger explained his break with Donald Trump: “The bottom line is he just never believed in it. And to me, I said to myself, okay then I cannot really go and be on his team because I’m a big believer that we have to do something about reducing pollution and we have to do something about, you know, having people die—7 million people a year die.”
He rejected the notion that climate action depends solely on American leadership: “So many people say, ‘Oh my god, if America doesn’t move forward, then does it make any sense to move forward at all?’ It’s nonsense because the fact of the matter is that every state in the United States has its own environmental laws.”
The Schwarzenegger-Blair partnership exemplifies environmental issues transcending political divides.
“I didn’t see it as a political issue. I thought it was a people’s issue,” Schwarzenegger said in the June panel.
Blair emphasized challenges in developing nations: “The historic source of emissions is with the western world, but the actual emissions rising now are in the developing world—in China, in India, Southeast Asia,” he stated.
“We could win the battle in the developed world and lose it in the developing world,” Blair warned.
Both leaders stressed practical solutions require public support.
“We have to create a people’s movement and it’s no different than the fitness movement,” Schwarzenegger stated .
Blair added: “The job of a leader in a democracy is to ask what people need and then persuade them that it is what they want.”
