"Pimp My Ride" isn't the sort of television program one watches for a lesson in eco-consciousness. Each week on the MTV reality show, one lucky teenager's old clunker is transformed into an outrageously appointed dream car...For today's episode, "Pimp My Ride" has invited a man who knows a thing or two about muscle. Peering under the crimson and white hood of a pimped-out '65 Chevy Impala, Arnold Schwarzenegger all but caresses the new 800-horsepower engine, which has been overhauled to run on bio-diesel for a special Earth Day episode of the show. "You can have an engine that's fast and furious and still reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 to 40 percent," Schwarzenegger declares for the cameras. "This is the future..."

Schwarzenegger traces his green sensibilities to his childhood in postwar Austria, where he grew up with rationed food and electricity--and had to haul bath water from a well...

After marrying Maria, Schwarzenegger soaked up even more environmental activism from her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted environmental lawyer. When Schwarzenegger first ran for office during the 2003 election to recall California Gov. Gray Davis, Kennedy recommended his friend Terry Tamminen, a well-known ocean advocate from Santa Monica, as the campaign's environmental adviser. Tamminen helped the novice candidate craft an environmental-action plan, which included generous subsidies for hydrogen and solar power, as well as the establishment of huge nature conservancies in the Sierras and a ban on offshore drilling...

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