Governator in Vancouver
Penny Ditch  |  by www.canada.com. All rights reserved. 18.07 | 13:14

The Terminator's handshake is not unlike any other politician you might have occasion to meet: neither too soft nor too firm, somewhere between the steely action hero he is and the girly man he most certainly is not.
As an actor turned politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger also still cuts an iconic figure sitting in a hall inside the Sutton Place Hotel, the spot often favoured by Hollywood stars who come to Vancouver.
Muscles still bulge under his tailor-made suit.

And as he sits, and his trousers rise above his ankles, you catch a glimpse of manly, hand-tooled cowboy boots featuring the governor's seal for "the Great State of 'Kalifornia,' " in case you might overlook his new role.

Arnold Schwarzenegger with Special Olympics athlete

Arnold Schwarzenegger with Special Olympics athlete

Steve Bosch/Vancouver Sun
Font: The governor shakes your hand.

Then he slowly places his on his knees, offering a brief peek at some impressive jewelry. On the left is a watch the size of his fist; on the right an eye-catching chunk of gold as big as, well, one of those lug nuts on his Hummers.
Which naturally brings to mind a question.

Just how does the governor of California, a guy trying to sell the rest of us on cutting back on fossil fuels to save the planet, rationalize owning five of those gas-guzzling behemoths?
"Well, first of all, I drive none of them really, except maybe once a month the biofuel Hummer," says Schwarzenegger.
A friendly smile spreads across the famous face with a perfect tan that must have George Hamilton heading for more sun lamp time.

"They're all in storage, all my vehicles are in storage."
But that doesn't mean we can't talk a little Hummer theory in the age of global warming.
"It's not the size of the Hummer that causes the pollution, it is the engine, that is a fossil fuel engine, that causes the pollution," he explains.


So, he's now using his own personal fleet to see how green you can make a vehicle originally designed as an American fighting machine. The Hummer, it seems, can help save the planet.
Hummer No.

1, says Schwarzenegger, has been converted by General Motors to run on hydrogen.
Hummer No. 2, which appears to be the his favourite, runs on biofuel.

"So you literally can go to a restaurant and you can take their oil that they have and use it for your engine," he said. "And that is why now [when] I drive around with my Hummer [it] smells instead of diesel it smells like french fries. Which is really vile.

"
"Now, the third Hummer, as we speak, is down in Orange County with a company that has just invented a box that has a mechanism in there that turns the greenhouse gases into hydrogen and pushes it back into the engine and uses it for additional mileage," he said. "So, we are right now testing that in the lab."
As for Hummer No.

4, Schwarzenegger suggests someone might soon come up and perhaps yank the engine and put in one that runs on electricity.
"That would be terrific."
Hummer No.

5?
Well, there wasn't enough time to get into that.
But the Governator -- who said Thursday "technology will save us" -- clearly isn't planning on giving that up.

He said he believes the private sector will eventually find yet another technological breakthrough.
"The great thing about all of this is the more we set standards and caps the more industry is coming up with ways of trying to profit from that and also make business out of that."
And save the Hummer.


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Keywords: Hummer No
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