Leonardo DiCaprio gives bold speech on climate change at UN
At the United Nations emergency Climate Change Summit, 40-year-old actor Leonardo DiCaprio urged world leaders to take action on the worsening issue.
In his speech at the organization's headquarters in New York City, DiCaprio said that he was there to speak not as an expert, but as a concerned citizen just like thousands of others who marched the streets two days ago on Sunday, in more than 150 countries. "As an actor I pretend for a living. I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems. I believe humankind has looked at climate change in that same way: as if it were a fiction, happening to someone else's planet, as if pretending that climate change wasn't real would somehow make it go away." He made remarks about the daily manifestations of climate change; intensifying droughts, warming temperatures, acidifying oceans, methane plumes rising from beneath the ocean floor, and an ice-sheet melting at rates faster than scientists had projected. DiCaprio stated that climate change is neither rhetorical nor hysterical. "It's a fact. The scientific community knows it, industry and governments know it, even the United States military knows it. The chief of the U.S. Navy's Pacific command, Admiral Samuel Locklear, recently said that climate change is our single greatest security threat." DiCaprio is known for his involvement in environmental issues like conservation efforts. He frequently gets involved in environmentalist campaigns, supports causes financially and volunteers, too. He noted that humanity passed the point of expecting individuals to make a difference by using hybrid cars or switching to energy efficient light bulbs. The situation, disaster as he called, is way more dangerous now. He said industries and governments around the world need to take decisive and large-scale action. "We need to put a pricetag on carbon emissions, and eliminate government subsidies for coal, gas, and oil companies. We need to end the free ride that industrial polluters have been given in the name of a free-market economy. For the economy itself will die if our ecosystems collapse." DiCaprio expressed that clean air, clean water and a livable climate are inalienable human rights, meaning that they can't be taken away. "Honoured delegates, leaders of the world, I pretend for a living. But you do not. The people made their voices heard on Sunday around the world and the momentum will not stop. And now it's YOUR turn, the time to answer the greatest challenge of our existence on this planet ... is now."
