Arnold Schwarzenegger stood up at his own climate summit in Austria this week and told Democrats they were idiots for chasing oil refineries out of California and then importing the oil anyway. He is correct. He is also the guy who handed them the keys to the car.
The Terminator Discovers Blowback
According to the New York Post, Schwarzenegger used his Vienna climate summit to publicly rap California Democrats for a policy loop so stupid it almost requires deliberate effort: drive out domestic refineries with punishing regulations, then import 60 to 75 percent of the state's oil from foreign sources, generating the exact emissions the whole exercise was supposed to eliminate. It is, as logical failures go, a masterpiece.
He is not wrong. The Post lays out a damning inventory of what California's green agenda has actually produced for residents: among the least affordable housing in the country, gasoline prices that routinely make the rest of America's jaws drop, rolling blackouts on a power grid that was supposedly being modernized for a decade, and consumer choice increasingly managed by Sacramento bureaucrats who have very strong feelings about what kind of stove you're allowed to want.
Gavin Newsom and the Democrats who've run California for the better part of two decades have treated climate policy less like governance and more like a fundraising mechanism with good PR. The apocalypse sells. Donors love it. And if the grid goes down in August, well, that's what candles are for.
The Part Schwarzenegger Left Out of His Speech
Here is where it gets fun. The New York Post points out that Schwarzenegger spent eight years as governor of California building the exact regulatory architecture that Newsom and Jerry Brown later used to supercharge every policy outcome he now finds so outrageous.
Specifically: renewable energy mandates, solar rooftop requirements, gasoline blend rules, anti-sprawl housing patterns, and most significantly, the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, which Schwarzenegger signed with what the Post describes as "great fanfare." That law bills businesses for carbon emissions and generates a multibillion-dollar fund that Democrats have spent the years since treating as a personal slush fund for pet projects and donor-enriching green pork. Schwarzenegger also backed California's bullet train, sold partly on environmental grounds and now one of the great infrastructure disasters in American history.
Newsom did not invent this machine. He inherited it, turbocharged it, and drove it off a cliff. But Schwarzenegger built the engine. Criticizing the crash from a climate summit in Austria is a special kind of audacity.
What This Actually Cost Regular Californians
Set aside the politics for a second and look at the numbers. California imports somewhere between 60 and 75 percent of the oil its residents consume, according to the Post's reporting. That is not a state that ended its fossil fuel dependency. That is a state that outsourced its fossil fuel dependency to people who don't have to answer to California voters.
The price of that choice shows up everywhere. Gas prices, yes. But also energy bills inflated by a grid being asked to do things it was not designed to do on a timeline set by politicians rather than engineers. Retail goods shipped by diesel trucks that now cost more to run. Appliances that are harder to buy because the regulations on them have multiplied. Housing that has become so expensive in part because anti-sprawl mandates restrict where and how much you can build.
And for what measurable climate outcome? As the Post flatly observes, California's climate rules have made near-zero difference in global temperatures. The sacrifice was real. The result was not.
The Cynical Game Underneath All of It
The Post's characterization of how Democrats have weaponized climate politics in California is blunt and worth quoting directly: they've used climate alarmism to signal virtue, deflect blame, demonize Republicans as deniers, raise money, enrich cronies with taxpayer-funded green spending, and control Californians' choices while entrenching their own power. Apocalypse as a business model.
That framing might sound harsh until you look at the results and ask who benefited. Not the Californians paying six dollars a gallon for gas. Not the renters who can't afford to live near the jobs. Not the families sitting in the dark during a blackout in a state that has been promising a clean energy future for fifteen years. The people who benefited were the ones writing the regulations, awarding the contracts, and collecting the campaign checks.
Schwarzenegger is right that something has gone badly wrong. He is less eager to discuss why he thought the people who came after him would use the tools he built any differently than they did.
The Dingo Take
Look, there is something almost poetic about a man who made his name playing a killing machine that cannot be stopped or reasoned with going to Europe to complain that the unstoppable policy machine he built is still running. Schwarzenegger genuinely seems to believe he can criticize the Democratic climate agenda from the outside, as though he were some neutral observer who just happened to govern California for eight years and sign the foundational legislation that made all of it possible. He cannot. He is not.
That said, the substance of his criticism is correct, and it matters. A climate policy that drives out domestic production and replaces it with foreign imports is not an environmental policy. It is a performance. California has been performing environmentalism for two decades while its residents bear the real costs of higher prices, less reliable power, and shrinking choices. The people running the performance have done quite well. The audience, somewhat less so.
The lesson here is not that climate policy is bad or that Schwarzenegger is a villain. It is that policy built on vibes, donor relationships, and political signaling tends to produce vibes, donor relationships, and political signaling rather than actual outcomes. California wanted to lead the world on climate. Instead it built a system that ships its emissions overseas, calls it progress, and charges residents a premium for the privilege. That is not leadership. That is a racket with solar panels on top.
