It sounds like the plot of a buddy cop film: a movie star-turned-governor teams up with a hotshot political rising star to save the planet.
Friday, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger—also an actor and star of films like "The Terminator" and "Kindergarten Cop"—posted a video on Twitter of himself and French President Emmanuel Macron. The two called on President Donald Trump to "make the planet great again."
It's not the first time either figure has criticized the president. Schwarzenegger famously got into a Twitter spat with Trump over ratings for the television show "The New Celebrity Apprentice." More substantively, Macron called for American climate scientists, entrepreneurs, and engineers to move to France in the wake of Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
I was truly honored to meet with President @EmmanuelMacron about how we can work together for a clean energy future. He's a great leader. pic.twitter.com/MSoxjIruup— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) June 23, 2017
Charles Sennott, executive director of The GroundTruth Project, said the video speaks to a larger point about the future of the Paris Agreement. In the wake of Trump's withdrawal, mayors, governors, university presidents, and entrepreneurs around the country have stepped up to make their own commitments about curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
"The structure of the Paris Agreement and its accords related to climate change rely heavily on smaller entities than nations like regions [and] states and cities," Sennott said. "Mayors [and] governors will play a very big role in this country in carrying those commitments forward."
Massachusetts has been a big part of that movement. Earlier this month, the city of Boston posted climate change data and research that had been deleted from the federal Environmental Protection Agency's website onto its own site.
"We're seeing that in Massachusetts, and we're going to see it a lot in California," Sennott said.
Click the audio player above to hear more from Charles Sennott.
