dicaprio speech on climate change analysis

February 29, 2016

Leonardo DiCaprio Uses Oscar Speech to Urge Action on Climate Change

The world must “stop procrastinating” and tackle “the most urgent threat facing our species”

By Lisa Friedman & ClimateWire

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Leonardo DiCaprio used his Oscar acceptance speech last night to declare that climate change “is real” and to blast what he called the “politics of greed.”

DiCaprio won the Academy Award for best actor for his role in “The Revenant” as a 19th-century frontiersman who is left for dead after being mauled by a bear.

He said making “The Revenant” was “about man’s relationship with the natural world” and noted that the world in 2015 marked its hottest year on record. The production crew, he said, had to move to the “southern tip of this planet” in order to find snow.

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“Climate change is real; it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating,” DiCaprio said, to applause from celebrities and others inside Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre.

“Let us not take this planet for granted,” he said.

As he did months earlier in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this year, DiCaprio also decried “the politics of greed.” He called on viewers to support leaders “who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations, but who speak for humanity.”

Speaking to reporters after the Academy Awards ceremony, DiCaprio said he had hoped he’d be able to bring his message about climate urgency to the millions of people watching the Oscars. He also directly addressed the upcoming 2016 presidential elections.

“I feel so overwhelmed with gratitude, but I also feel the ticking clock,” he said. “The truth is this: If you do not believe in climate change, you do not believe in modern science or empirical truths.”

A longtime environmental activist, DiCaprio has been deeply involved in the climate movement. Last year, he attended a U.N. summit in Paris to lend support to an international accord.

DiCaprio also has bought the movie rights to a post-apocalyptic young adult novel, “The Sandcastle Empire,” which reportedly attracted the actor with its environmental themes ( ClimateWire , Feb. 26).

He said last night that he also is working on a documentary about climate change that has brought him to Greenland, China, India and elsewhere.

“This is the most existential crisis our civilization has ever known, and I wanted to speak out about that,” he said.

Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC.  www.eenews.net , 202-628-6500

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Research Article

Big Data Sensors of Organic Advocacy: The Case of Leonardo DiCaprio and Climate Change

Contributed equally to this work with: Eric C. Leas, John W. Ayers

Affiliation University of California San Diego School of Medicine, San Diego, CA, United States of America

Affiliations Institute for Disease Modeling, Bellevue, WA, United States of America, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States of America, Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, United States of America, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, United States of America

Affiliations Human Language Technology Center of Excellence, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States of America, Bloomberg LP, New York, New York, United States of America

Affiliations Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States of America, Department of Political Science, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States of America

Affiliations University of California San Diego School of Medicine, San Diego, CA, United States of America, Department of Political Science, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States of America

Affiliations School of Media and Journalism, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, United States of America, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, United States of America

Affiliation Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States of America

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Graduate School of Public Health, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, United States of America

• Eric C. Leas, 
• Benjamin M. Althouse, 
• Mark Dredze, 
• Nick Obradovich, 
• James H. Fowler, 
• Seth M. Noar, 
• Jon-Patrick Allem, 
• John W. Ayers

• Published: August 2, 2016
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159885
• Reader Comments

The strategies that experts have used to share information about social causes have historically been top-down, meaning the most influential messages are believed to come from planned events and campaigns. However, more people are independently engaging with social causes today than ever before, in part because online platforms allow them to instantaneously seek, create, and share information. In some cases this “organic advocacy” may rival or even eclipse top-down strategies. Big data analytics make it possible to rapidly detect public engagement with social causes by analyzing the same platforms from which organic advocacy spreads. To demonstrate this claim we evaluated how Leonardo DiCaprio’s 2016 Oscar acceptance speech citing climate change motivated global English language news (Bloomberg Terminal news archives), social media (Twitter postings) and information seeking (Google searches) about climate change. Despite an insignificant increase in traditional news coverage (54%; 95%CI: -144 to 247), tweets including the terms “climate change” or “global warming” reached record highs, increasing 636% (95%CI: 573–699) with more than 250,000 tweets the day DiCaprio spoke. In practical terms the “DiCaprio effect” surpassed the daily average effect of the 2015 Conference of the Parties (COP) and the Earth Day effect by a factor of 3.2 and 5.3, respectively. At the same time, Google searches for “climate change” or “global warming” increased 261% (95%CI, 186–335) and 210% (95%CI 149–272) the day DiCaprio spoke and remained higher for 4 more days, representing 104,190 and 216,490 searches. This increase was 3.8 and 4.3 times larger than the increases observed during COP’s daily average or on Earth Day. Searches were closely linked to content from Dicaprio’s speech (e.g., “hottest year”), as unmentioned content did not have search increases (e.g., “electric car”). Because these data are freely available in real time our analytical strategy provides substantial lead time for experts to detect and participate in organic advocacy while an issue is salient. Our study demonstrates new opportunities to detect and aid agents of change and advances our understanding of communication in the 21st century media landscape.

Citation: Leas EC, Althouse BM, Dredze M, Obradovich N, Fowler JH, Noar SM, et al. (2016) Big Data Sensors of Organic Advocacy: The Case of Leonardo DiCaprio and Climate Change. PLoS ONE 11(8): e0159885. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159885

Editor: Donald R. Olson, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, UNITED STATES

Received: May 5, 2016; Accepted: July 6, 2016; Published: August 2, 2016

Copyright: © 2016 Leas et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All data are publicly available. News coverage data can be accessed using the Bloomberg Terminal {NT GO} function ( bloomberg.com/professional ), Twitter postings can be accessed using the public API ( dev.twitter.com/streaming/overview ), and Google searches can be downloaded from Google Trends ( google.com/trends ). Please contact the corresponding author if further assistance is required.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. Bloomberg LP provided support in the form of salaries for authors [MD], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: Mark Dredze is commercially employed by Bloomberg LP. There are no other relevant competing interests. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Introduction

On February 28 th , 2016 Leonardo DiCaprio used his Oscar acceptance speech to advocate for action on climate change to 34.5 million live viewers ( Box 1 ) [ 1 ]. DiCaprio is not alone in championing social causes, especially climate change advocacy [ 2 , 3 ]. Recent trends suggest that a large number of non-celebrities are also conscious of social and environmental causes, with 81% of global consumers claiming they would be willing to purchase/consume fewer products to preserve natural resources [ 4 ]. Moreover, the Web 2.0 era has democratized advocacy. Unlike ever before, the public can seek, create, and share information instantaneously online [ 5 ]. We call this phenomenon “organic advocacy” since it is often led by the public and occurs outside the context of expert-led events or campaigns.

“And lastly, I just want to say this, making The Revenant was about man's relationship to the natural world—the world that we collectively felt in 2015 [w]as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production had to move to the southernmost tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real, it is happening right now, it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous peoples of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people who will be most affected by this, for our children's children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed.” ~ Transcript from Leonardo Dicaprio’s Oscar Acceptance Speech

Population-level engagement with a campaign or organized event is typically assessed using surveys, but surveys are ill equipped to study discrete occurrences of organic advocacy, such as DiCaprio’s speech. Surveys are costly and typically do not have sampling frames that allow for the necessary baseline measures to demonstrate deviations from historical trends. These barriers alone may explain why organic advocacy has not been well-studied or integrated into expert communication strategies. Significant breakthroughs in big data are eliminating some of these barriers. Online footprints continuously shadow how the public engages with and seeks information [ 6 , 7 ], including with environmental issues and climate change [ 8 , 9 ]. By harnessing these novel data streams, we can directly observe how the public engaged with DiCaprio’s call-to-action. And because these data are available in real time, our strategy can be taken to the field to inform how experts respond to advocacy as it is happening. Specifically, we explored how DiCaprio’s message resonated on (a) traditional news and social media, and (b) how the public concurrently sought information on how to respond online. We also compared DiCaprio’s speech to other organized climate change events, such as Earth Day, to contrast the potential impacts of organic advocacy to planned advocacy.

Materials and Methods

Evaluating changes in traditional news and social media relied on daily trends for global news articles from the Bloomberg Terminal using the {NT GO} function ( bloomberg.com/professional ) and postings on Twitter ( dev.twitter.com/streaming/overview ) that included the phrases “climate change” or “global warming” from January 1, 2011 through March 9, 2016. News was plotted on a relative scale (the proportion of all news including the key terms) and Twitter on an absolute scale (all English language tweets including the key terms) since it was only available in this format.

To evaluate how the public sought information we monitored all English language Google searches ( google.com/trends ), taking into account the specific topics the public sought information on, by hour for February 25, 2016 through March 9, 2016. Google searches were divided between those primarily investigating the claims made by DiCaprio, including the exact terms “climate change”, “global warming,” “hottest year,” and “indigenous,” versus those investigating topics that are related to climate change, but were not mentioned by DiCaprio, including the exact terms “solar power,” “electric car,” “sea level rise,” and “carbon tax.” Searches were plotted on a relative search volume (the proportion of searches including the key terms relative to all searches scaled to a 0 to 100 scale where 100 is the highest search proportion) and absolute volumes were estimated using Google Adwords ( google.com/adwords ).

Our study design was quasi-experimental, deriving a single estimate of the “DiCaprio effect” by comparing observed news, Twitter, and search volumes around DiCaprio’s speech to a counterfactual estimate representing expected news, Twitter, and search volumes had DiCaprio not advocated for climate change during the Oscars [ 10 ]. The observed volumes were derived from the time series. The counterfactual volumes were derived from an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model, with components estimated using the algorithm developed by Hyndman and Khandakar [ 11 ]. This model used historical data to estimate expected volumes for the time period after DiCaprio’s speech. These models are robust to the most well-known biases, including recurring periodicities and trending in the data, such as how the daily volume of tweets may be growing as Twitter’s user base grows. The ratio of observed and counterfactual volumes were calculated so as to represent the “effect” as a percent increase with confidence bounds (alpha = 0.05) estimated by using 10,000 random draws from the multivariate normal sampling distribution with mean equal to the maximum-likelihood point estimates, and variance equal to the variance-covariance matrix [ 12 ]. We fitted additional models to describe the durability of the “DiCaprio effect” and describe variations by hour or day.

To provide a practical comparison, we also studied the most recent United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP), an international brokerage of a global climate change agreement, and the 45 th Earth Day celebration. This analysis relied on the same data trends and analytic approaches used to study the DiCaprio effect. In summary, each time trend was analyzed and the observed volumes were derived from each respective time series, including November 30, 2015 though December 12, 2015 for COP and April 22, 2015 for Earth Day, and the counterfactual volumes were derived from forecasts using the Hyndman and Khandakar method [ 11 ]. The ratios of observed and counterfactual volumes were used to compute the COP effect and Earth Day effect for each data type. Because the COP occurs over several days we computed the summary COP effect using the daily average for all days during COP. The resulting COP effect and Earth Day effect was then compared to the DiCaprio effect (e.g., Dicaprio effect divided by the summary COP effect) with statistical tests estimated by using 10,000 random draws from the multivariate normal sampling distribution with mean equal to the maximum-likelihood point estimates, and variance equal to the variance-covariance matrix [ 12 ].

All analyses relied on anonymized data and adhere to the terms and conditions, terms of use, and privacy policies of Bloomberg LP, Google, and Twitter. All analyses were computed using R Ver. 3.2.1

Social media engagement on climate change spiked after DiCaprio’s speech even though news coverage of climate change did not statistically significantly increase (54%; 95%CI: -144 to 247). Tweets mentioning climate change or global warming were 636% (95%CI: 573–699) higher than expected the day DiCaprio spoke ( Fig 1 ) .

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

Bar plots show estimated increases in daily volumes for news articles and Twitter postings the day of DiCaprio’s Oscar speech, the daily average during the 2015 Conference of the Parties meeting, and 2015 Earth Day, comparing the observed volume to an empirical expectation of the counterfactual volume derived from forecasts using historical trends. Arrows indicate that the confidence interval bound continues off the plotted image.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159885.g001

To put these trends in perspective, the response to DiCaprio’s speech on Twitter was 5.3 times larger (p = 0.003) than Earth Day (Earth Day = 117%; 95%CI: 35–202) and 3.2 times larger (p < 0.0001) than the daily average during the most recent COP (COP = 200%; 95%CI: 149–251). Moreover, the number of tweets including the phrases “climate change” or “global warming” on the day of DiCaprio’s speech were at the highest recorded value in our database with more than 250,000 tweets on that day.

Increased engagement on social media co-occurred with increased information seeking for content from DiCaprio’s speech ( Fig 2 ). Google searches for “climate change” increased immediately the hour DiCaprio spoke, rising 261% (95%CI: 186–335) the day of, 78% (95%CI: 51–105) the day after, and remained significantly higher 4 days later (39%; 95%CI: 17–61); accounting for 104,190 total searches. “Global warming” searches were 210% (95%CI: 149–272) higher the day of and still 42% (95%CI: 19–65) higher 4 days later, representing 216,490 total searches. In relative terms, the day DiCaprio spoke these searches were 3.8 (p = 0.004) and 4.3 (p = 0.005) times higher than the daily average during the most recent COP and Earth Day, respectively. At their peak these searches reached the third-highest point ever recorded for climate change or global warming on Google trends.

Time trends show Google search volumes for the referenced focal terms, clustered according to those included (versus not included) in DiCaprio’s speech. Bar plots show estimated increases in each focal term, with estimates showing the day of DiCaprio’s speech (0) and subsequent days labeled as 1 through 5. Estimates were derived by comparing the observed volume to an empirical expectation of the counterfactual volume derived from forecasts using historical trends.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159885.g002

In addition, DiCaprio claimed that 2015 was the hottest year on record and indigenous populations will be disproportionately affected by climate change. Google queries including the terms “hottest year” or “indigenous” spiked immediately yielding 342% (95%CI: 248–433) and 81% (95%CI: 53–109) more searches than expected the first day following the speech, and remained elevated for 2 and 3 more days, respectively. During the same period, queries for climate change topics not mentioned by DiCaprio, such as “electric cars,” did not deviate from their historical trends.

DiCaprio’s speech was a major moment for climate change advocacy, inspiring record levels of social media engagement and near record levels of online information seeking for climate change, apart from any similar increase in traditional news coverage.

Alongside DiCaprio there are several newly discovered cases showing that organic advocacy—emanating from celebrities and ordinary citizens—have a reach that is greater than virtually any planned media campaign. The most significant smoking-cessation-promoting event in Brazil was when Brazilian President Lula disclosed his laryngeal cancer diagnosis which he attributed to smoking [ 13 ]. Angelina Jolie’s editorial in The New York Times disclosing her prophylactic double mastectomy corresponded with record levels of news and Google searches for breast cancer, increases that presaged amplified breast cancer screening and prevention [ 14 , 15 ]. Catherine Zeta-Jones disclosed she was treated for bipolar disorder and public engagement with and help-seeking for the condition spiked near record levels [ 16 ]. When Charlie Sheen first disclosed his HIV-positive status he personally did not promote HIV prevention, but the public engaged with HIV prevention in record numbers [ 17 ]. Ordinary citizen Tawny Willoughby’s Facebook pictures of her skin cancer lesions, attributable to indoor tanning, were shared more than 50,000 times and widely covered by news media [ 18 ]. These instances beg the question of how experts might embrace organic advocacy to further their social causes.

Traditional top-down communication strategies—i.e., experts and organizations communicating with the public through planned events and campaigns—have predominated as the method for disseminating scientific evidence and promoting behavior change [ 19 ]. These top-down frameworks typically expect that messages are more impactful when shared in the context of a planned campaign [ 20 ] and, in some cases, it is almost accepted that scientific evidence is only available and reliably disseminated “from the top.” For instance, many notable reviews, including for climate change communication strategies, do not consider the possibility of information retrieval and sharing outside of the context of a planned campaign [ 21 – 23 ]. However, the example of DiCaprio and others demonstrates that dissemination can occur completely outside the context of a campaign and can even generate more public engagement than planned events. Moreover, in some cases, the scientific community is beginning to find that retaliatory messages from bottom-up communication channels (e.g., on Twitter) can eclipse, dilute, or reduce the efficacy of planned messages [ 24 ]. Top-down frameworks are useful but communication strategies should be adapted to include a greater emphasis on bottom-up approaches where experts dedicate more resources to listening, dialoguing, and empowering the public who themselves can become advocates for change.

The use of big media data to inform real time decision-making is an increasingly common phenomenon throughout the sciences [ 25 – 28 ]. To harness the power of big data in the context of scientific communication, developing the infrastructure to detect organic advocacy events virtually in real time should be a priority. As an analogy, the financial industry relies on sophisticated systems for real time decision-making, like the Bloomberg Terminal. These systems map population trends similar to those we outlined here but are available to thousands of users, alerting users automatically to critical deviations in trends, and allowing users to share intelligence with colleagues. It is time the scientific community invest in similar resources. All of the results described herein can be available in real time, including additional forms of passive surveillance and crowdsourced data to understand discrete media events and climate change generally [ 29 – 33 ]. In the case of DiCaprio there was minimal engagement from the scientific community based on our review or related media, likely because experts were not aware of the magnitude of his speech or did not know how to build upon his call for action on climate change.

With awareness of events that can facilitate organic advocacy, the scientific community can engage the public by promoting existing resources and designing new messages targeting public discourse when public engagement and information seeking are high [ 34 ]. Given that searches were closely linked to the content of DiCaprio’s speech, the importance of this task is underscored as experts could have filled content gaps and highlighted how the public can mitigate climate change. Reactions could be shared across a diverse array of bottom-up communication channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter at a very low cost and mirroring how the public is engaged.

By amending our communication frameworks, building infrastructure for monitoring, and reacting to organic advocacy in near real time, we open novel possibilities for communication advocacy and research. For instance, does traditional top-down media advocacy interact with or generate public engagement to discrete organic events? How does organic advocacy about misinformation resonate, such as climate change denial [ 35 ] or anti-vaccination [ 36 ]? Can events like DiCaprio’s speech drive more than engagement by changing opinions and inspiring action in ways that are complementary to top-down communication approaches [ 37 , 38 ]?

Climate change is a serious crisis with critical implications for public health [ 39 , 40 ]. Climate change advocacy relies on imploring citizens to acknowledge the reality of a warming planet, accept humanity’s role in the fate of the planet, and help to forge a consensus on concrete solutions to the problem [ 41 , 42 ]. DiCaprio issued a wake up call to the public that ignoring climate change poses great peril. At the same time, we believe that ignoring organic advocacy and bottom-up communication approaches imperils the effectiveness of media advocacy and, ultimately, environmental and public health. The scientific community must adapt to the 21st century dynamic communication landscape and ready itself for the next opportunity to harness the agents of change.

Acknowledgments

We appreciate feedback from the Epidemiology Doctoral Seminar and the Human Nature Group at San Diego State University and University of California San Diego. All errors or omissions are our own.

Author Contributions

• Conceived and designed the experiments: ECL JWA.
• Analyzed the data: ECL BMA JWA.
• Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: ECL BMA MD NO JHF SMN JPA JWA.
• Wrote the paper: ECL BMA MD NO JHF SMN JPA JWA.
• View Article
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• PubMed/NCBI
• 11. Hyndman RJ, and Khandakar Y. Automatic time series forecasting: the forecast package for R 7, 2008. Available: http://www.jstatsoft.org/v27/i03 . 2007.
• 18. Stapleton, AC. Frequent tanner shares grisly skin-cancer selfie. 2015;5: 15. Available: http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/12/living/skin-cancer-selfie-feat/
• 19. Rice RE, and Atkin CK. Public communication campaigns. Sage; 2012.

'None of this is hysteria. It is fact': Watch Leonardo DiCaprio's United Nations Climate Summit speech

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio made a brief appearance at the United Nations on Tuesday, outlining the risks of climate change in a short speech that implored leaders to take definitive action in what he said is 'not a partisan debate'

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Actor Leonardo DiCaprio made a brief appearance at the United Nations Climate Summit on Tuesday, outlining the risks of climate change in a short speech that implored leaders to take definitive action in what he said is “not a partisan debate.”

“I stand before you not as an expert, but as a concerned citizen, one of the 400,000 people who marched in the streets of New York on Sunday and the billions of others around the world who want to solve our climate crisis,” DiCaprio said, referencing Sunday’s global People’s Climate March. “As an actor, I pretend for a living. I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems. I believe mankind has looked at climate change in that same way: as if it were a fiction. As if pretending that climate change wasn’t real would somehow make it go away. But I think we know better than that now.”

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DiCaprio then outlined some of what he called “extreme weather events,” including melting ice sheets, intensifying storms and the acidifying of the ocean.

“None of this is rhetoric, and none of this is hysteria,” he said. “It is fact. The scientific community knows it, industry knows it, government knows it, even the United States military knows it.”

The actor, who was recently in Canada to work on an environmental documentary targeting the Alberta oil sands, then told world leaders that they could “make history, or you will be vilified by it.”

“(It is) not a question of politics, it is a question of our own survival,” he said. “The time to answer humankind’s greatest challenge is now.”

Watch DiCaprio’s speech below.

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Leonardo DiCaprio Uses Oscar Speech to Speak Out on Climate Change

By Margaret Lenker

Margaret Lenker

• Leonardo DiCaprio Uses Oscar Speech to Speak Out on Climate Change 9 years ago
• Joe Biden Gets Standing Ovation at Oscars 9 years ago
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While Leonardo Dicaprio took home his first Oscar Sunday at the 88th annual Academy Awards, he used his speech to discuss climate change, emphasizing that he saw the direct results of the changing planet while filming “The Revenant.”

“Making ‘The Revenant’ was about man’s relationship to the natural world, the world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in reported history — our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow,” DiCaprio said. “Climate change is real. It is happening right now. It’s the most urgent threat facing our entire species and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.”

Dicaprio continued, “We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people out there who would be most affected by this. For our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed. I thank you all for this amazing award tonight. Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted.”

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An environmentalist, the actor often uses social media as a platform to inform others about the planet’s issues, often retweeting President Obama, Wold Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace and sharing relevant articles on his Facebook page. Earlier this month, Dicaprio received the Crystal Award, which recognizes the achievements of leading artists who have shown commitment to improving the state of the world, at the World Economic Forum.

DiCaprio wasn’t the only winner to speak out about climate change. Jenny Beavan , who won best costume design for “Mad Max: Fury Road,” also took the opportunity to talk about the environment.

“I just want to say one quite serious thing, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, but actually it could be horribly prophetic, ‘Mad Max,’ if we’re not kinder to each other, and if we don’t stop polluting our atmosphere, so you know, it could happen,” Beavan said.

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How Leonardo DiCaprio Got People to Care About Climate Change

I t seems like Leonardo DiCaprio got a bunch of people to talk about the Earth more after he accepted the award for Best Actor at the Oscars in February.

In his acceptance speech, which he finally got to make after years of looking gracious every time he didn’t win, DiCaprio demanded action on climate change, and it caused a significant spike in online conversation about climate change online, a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE finds. According to the research, the number of tweets about climate change following DiCaprio’s call surged after the speech. (While the media didn’t report on climate change any more than they already were after DiCaprio’s plea, tweets with the phrases “climate change” or “global warming” hit a record-breaking number.)

“A single speech, at a very opportunistic time, at the Oscar ceremony, resulted in the largest increase in public engagement with climate change ever,” John Ayers of San Diego State University told The Washington Post about the findings, which also insists grassroots are needed in addition to celebrities with causes.

In front of an audience of 34.4 million viewers , the actor used his role in The Revenant , about a man who has to survive extreme conditions in the natural world to segue into the matter at hand.

“Climate change is real, it is happening right now, it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous peoples of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people who will be most affected by this, for our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed,” he said.

Researchers used Twitter searches, Google trends and Bloomberg Terminal archives to map the social media footprint of his speech, and determined that the actor was a more powerful conversation starter for climate change than the Paris climate negotiations in Paris or Earth Day.

[ The Washington Post ]

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Leonardo DiCaprio, High-level Signature Ceremony for the Paris Agreement

Leonardo DiCaprio addressed the United Nations at the Paris climate agreement signing ceremony in New York City on April 22, this is what he said:

"Thank you, Mr. Secretary General, for the honor to address this body once more. And thanks to the distinguished climate leaders assembled here today who are ready to take action.

President Abraham Lincoln was also thinking of bold action 150 years ago when he said:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.”  

He was speaking before the U.S. Congress to confront the defining issue of his time—slavery.

Everyone knew it had to end but no one had the political will to stop it. Remarkably, his words ring as true today when applied to the defining crisis of our time—  climate change .

As a UN Messenger of Peace, I have been traveling all over the world for the last two years documenting how this crisis is changing the natural balance of our planet. I have seen cities like Beijing choked by industrial pollution. Ancient Boreal forests in Canada that have been clear cut and rainforests in Indonesia that have been incinerated. In India I met farmers whose crops have literally been washed away by historic flooding. In America I have witnessed unprecedented  droughts in California and sea level rise flooding the streets of Miami. In Greenland and in the Arctic I was astonished to see that ancient glaciers are rapidly disappearing well ahead of scientific predictions. All that I have seen and learned on this journey has terrified me.

There is no doubt in the world’s scientific community that this a direct result of human activity and that the effects of climate change will become astronomically worse in the future.

I do not need to throw statistics at you. You know them better than I do, and more importantly, you know what will happen if this scourge is left unchecked. You know that climate change is happening faster than even  the most pessimistic of scientists warned us decades ago. It has become a runaway freight train bringing with it an impending disaster for all living things.

Now think about the shame that each of us will carry when our children and grandchildren look back and realize that we had the means of stopping this devastation, but simply lacked the political will to do so.

Yes, we have achieved the Paris agreement . More countries have come together to sign this agreement today than for any other cause in the history of humankind—and that is a reason for hope—but unfortunately the evidence shows us that it will not be enough. 

Our planet cannot be saved unless we leave fossil fuels in the ground where they belong. An upheaval and massive change is required, now. One that leads to a new collective consciousness. A new collective evolution of the human race, inspired and enabled by a sense of urgency from all of you.

We all know that reversing the course of climate change will not be easy, but  the tools are in our hands—if we apply them before it is too late.

Renewable energy , clean fuels and putting a price on carbon pollution are beginning to turn the tide. This transition is not only the right thing for our world, but it also makes clear economic sense, and is possible within our lifetime.

But it is now upon you to do what great leaders have always done: to lead, inspire and empower as President  Lincoln did in his time.

We can congratulate each other today, but it will mean nothing if you return to your countries and fail to push beyond the promises of this historic agreement. Now is the time for bold unprecedented action.

My friends, look at the delegates around you. It is time to ask each other—which side of history will you be on?

As a citizen of our planet who has witnessed so much on this journey I thank you for all you have done to lay the foundation of a solution to this crisis, but after 21 years of debates and conferences it is time to declare no more talk. No more excuses. No more 10-year studies. No more allowing the fossil fuel companies to manipulate and dictate the science and policies that effect our future. This is the only body that can do what is needed. You, sitting in this very hall.

The world is now watching. You will either be lauded by future generations, or vilified by them.

Lincoln’s words still resonate to all of us here today:

“We will be remembered in spite of ourselves. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the last generation… We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth.”  

That is our charge now—you are the last best hope of Earth. We ask you to protect it. Or we—and all living things we cherish—are history.

Thank you."

Credit: United Nations, 2016

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Leonardo DiCaprio Calls for Action on Climate Change: It Is Not Hysteria, It’s Fact (Video)

The actor calls it “the greatest challenge of our existence on this planet”

Leonardo DiCaprio pressed world leaders on Tuesday morning at the United Nations Climate Summit to take action to address climate change.

DiCaprio, a longtime environmentalist, called the situation “the greatest challenge of our existence on this planet.”

Also read :  Tom Hardy Joins Leonardo DiCaprio in Revenge Movie ‘The Revenant’

“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,” he said at the summit. “My friends, this body — perhaps more than any other gathering in human history — now faces that difficult task. You can make history… or be vilified by it.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had appointed the “Great Gatsby” star as United Nations Messenger of Peace after calling him a “new voice for climate advocacy.”

Also read:   Leonardo DiCaprio, Sting Add Star Power to People’s Climate March in New York

“Every week
, we’re seeing new and undeniable Climate Events, evidence that accelerated Climate Change is here now,” said DiCaprio continued in his speech. “We know that droughts are intensifying, our oceans are warming and acidifying, with methane plumes rising up from beneath the ocean floor. We are seeing extreme weather events, increased temperatures, and the West Antarctic and Greenland ice-sheets melting at unprecedented rates, decades ahead of scientific projections.”

Also read:  Leonardo DiCaprio Demands Signed Nelson Mandela Photo From Auction House

DiCaprio , Ban Ki-moon, Sting  and former vice-president Al Gore lent their voices to the massive People’s Climate March in New York on Sunday, demanding global leaders take action to avert catastrophic climate change. The march also included actors  Mark Ruffalo , Ed Norton and  Evangeline Lilly . The approximately 400,000 strong group snaked along Central Park West and continued for nearly four miles.

Read the full transcript of DiCaprio’s speech on Tuesday below.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary-General, your excellencies, ladies and gentleman, and distinguished guests. I’m honored to be here today, I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned citizen, one of the 400,000 people who marched in the streets of New York on Sunday, and the billions of others around the world who want to solve our climate crisis.

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.

But I think we know better than that. Every week
, we’re seeing new and undeniable Climate Events, evidence that accelerated Climate Change is here now. We know that droughts are intensifying, our oceans are warming and acidifying, with methane plumes rising up from beneath the ocean floor. We are seeing extreme weather events, increased temperatures, and the West Antarctic and Greenland ice-sheets melting at unprecedented rates, decades ahead of scientific projections.

None of this is rhetoric, and none of it is hysteria. It is 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.

My Friends, this body – perhaps more than any other gathering in human history – now faces that difficult task. You can make history…or be vilified by it.

To be clear, this is not about just telling people to change their light bulbs or to buy a hybrid car. This disaster has grown BEYOND the choices that individuals make. This is now about our industries, and governments around the world taking decisive, large-scale action.

I am not a scientist, but I don’t need to be. Because the world’s scientific community has spoken, and they have given us our prognosis, if we do not act together, we will surely perish.

Now is our moment for 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, they don’t deserve our tax dollars, they deserve our scrutiny. For the economy itself will die if our eco-systems collapse.

The good news is that renewable energy is not only achievable but good economic policy. New research shows that by 2050 clean, renewable energy could supply 100% of the world’s energy needs using EXISTING TECHNOLOGIES, and it would create millions of jobs.

This is not a partisan debate; it is a human one. Clean air and water, and a livable climate are inalienable human rights. And solving this crisis is not a question of politics. It is our moral obligation – if, admittedly, a daunting one…

We only get one planet. Humankind must become accountable on a massive scale for the wanton destruction of our collective home. Protecting our future on this planet depends on the conscious evolution of our species.

This is the most urgent of times, and the most urgent of messages.

Honored 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.

I beg you to face it with courage. And honesty. Thank you.

Leonardo DiCaprio at the UN: 'Climate change is not hysteria – it's a fact'

‘The time to answer the greatest challenge of our existence on this planet is now. You can make history or be vilified by it’

Read UN climate summit live blog here

T hank you, Mr Secretary General, your excellencies, ladies and gentleman, and distinguished guests. I’m honored to be here today, I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned citizen, one of the 400,000 people who marched in the streets of New York on Sunday, and the billions of others around the world who want to solve our climate crisis.

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.

But I think we know better than that. Every week, we’re seeing new and undeniable climate events, evidence that accelerated climate change is here now . We know that droughts are intensifying, our oceans are warming and acidifying, with methane plumes rising up from beneath the ocean floor. We are seeing extreme weather events, increased temperatures, and the West Antarctic and Greenland ice-sheets melting at unprecedented rates, decades ahead of scientific projections.

None of this is rhetoric, and none of it is hysteria. It is fact. The scientific community knows it, Industry and governments know it, even the United States military knows it. The chief of the US navy’s Pacific command, admiral Samuel Locklear, recently said that climate change is our single greatest security threat.

My Friends, this body – perhaps more than any other gathering in human history – now faces that difficult task. You can make history ... or be vilified by it.

To be clear, this is not about just telling people to change their light bulbs or to buy a hybrid car. This disaster has grown BEYOND the choices that individuals make. This is now about our industries, and governments around the world taking decisive, large-scale action.

I am not a scientist, but I don’t need to be. Because the world’s scientific community has spoken, and they have given us our prognosis, if we do not act together, we will surely perish.

Now is our moment for 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, they don’t deserve our tax dollars, they deserve our scrutiny. For the economy itself will die if our ecosystems collapse.

The good news is that renewable energy is not only achievable but good economic policy. New research shows that by 2050 clean, renewable energy could supply 100% of the world’s energy needs using existing technologies, and it would create millions of jobs.

This is not a partisan debate; it is a human one. Clean air and water, and a livable climate are inalienable human rights. And solving this crisis is not a question of politics. It is our moral obligation – if, admittedly, a daunting one.

We only get one planet. Humankind must become accountable on a massive scale for the wanton destruction of our collective home. Protecting our future on this planet depends on the conscious evolution of our species.

This is the most urgent of times, and the most urgent of messages.

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.

I beg you to face it with courage. And honesty. Thank you.

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Leonardo DiCaprio (UN Messenger of Peace), Climate Summit 2014 - Opening Ceremony

Statement by Mr. Leonardo DiCaprio, UN Messenger of Peace with a special focus on climate change, at the opening of the Climate Summit 2014.

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Hollywood Is Finally Taking on Climate Change. It Should Go Even Further.

Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Hollywood celebrities have long prided themselves as the social conscience of America. Now, it seems, they’ve widened their reach to the entire Earth.

“Climate change is real, it is happening right now,” Leonardo DiCaprio said in his Oscar acceptance speech in February. “Let us not take this planet for granted.”

With those words, DiCaprio did more for climate change advocacy than any other individual effort, ever, according to a new study . Compared to the Paris climate summit last December—in which world leaders agreed to the first-ever global accord designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions—DiCaprio’s speech was four times as effective when it comes to increasing public interest in climate change.

Still, as powerful as it was, DiCaprio’s speech was only viewed by tens of millions of people. On Friday, an estimated 3 billion people watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, which included a stark, yet hopeful message about climate change. Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles directed the opening ceremony, which was probably the single most-watched moment yet about the single most important issue our planet is facing.

Moments like these are becoming more common as it becomes painfully clear that the world is running out of time to prevent essentially permanent and potentially catastrophic effects of global warming. Scientists have struggled for decades to get the same basic message across: The world is warming, humans are the cause, and we know how to stop it. It seems, given how resoundly Leo’s message was heard, that Hollywood has the potential to become the single most consequential voice amplifying scientists’ calls to rapidly change course away from fossil fuels. That signal boost can’t happen soon enough.

It doesn’t really matter that Leo flies like a king and has a personal carbon footprint that vastly tops anything we mere mortals could ever dream of, or that Brazil’s own record of protecting its country’s unique environment is mixed at best . What matters now, in this 11 th hour, is awareness and hope. We need to increase the number of people clamoring for action. And that’s what Leo can help do.

“All that I have seen and learned on my journey has absolutely terrified me,” said DiCaprio in an address to world leaders at the United Nations in April. “A massive change is required right now. … You are the last, best hope of Earth.”

Hope wasn’t always the focus. Ten years ago, possibly the only Powerpoint-based Oscar-winning film in history debuted. An Inconvenient Truth was a lightning rod, inflaming the debate on climate change and setting Al Gore apart as a leading political voice on communicating climate science. It was the start of the most important shift in global climate politics so far, and defined a decade of environmental messaging: Scare the bejeezus out of your audience via charts and graphs.

To some extent, that tactic has worked. For the first time, we have hard evidence that voters really, deeply care about climate change . Unfortunately, we’ve also seen the issue become one of the most polarizing in American politics. Whether you believe in climate change or not has become wrapped up in your political identity. That’s why the infiltration of climate science and awareness into mainstream culture is so heartening—if climate change becomes part of the narrative that surrounds everyday life, perhaps it will become less polarized.

Today, we’ve got much more beautiful people interested in the issue (no offense, Al) and the stories being told, taken from both the real world and those of our imaginations, are much more persuasive. The Emmy Award-winning series “Years of Living Dangerously,” which recently got renewed for a second season, features celebrities like Harrison Ford, Don Cheadle, and Matt Damon traveling the world and engaging with climate-related issues in often confrontational and eye-opening ways. (Indonesia threatened to deport Ford after he confronted the country’s forestry minister.) Climate change—or broadly dystopian environmental themes, at least—are appearing with growing frequency in movies and television. Game of Thrones, Interstellar, the Hunger Games, and the Revenant—the film for which DiCaprio won his Oscar all essentially tell the same story: If we blindly continue on our current path, things could get really, really bad.

But for climate change to become a top issue among the American public, we’ll need environmental themes to infiltrate popular culture even more. Hollywood has done a great job scaring us, but it now needs to move forward to solutions. In some ways, that’s a harder story to tell. Earlier this year, Charles Ferguson’s attempt at hope in his new climate change documentary A Time to Choose felt more like a long ad for the renewable energy industry. Perhaps a movie that is free to move beyond reality would be more inspiring—though that speaks to the sad state we are in.

Real change will happen only when our society’s concern for the environment reaches a critical mass and—this is important—demands a better world. Hollywood has gotten pretty good at showing us what might happen if we don’t act soon. The next step will be to imagine what a better world looks like.

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Leonardo DiCaprio addresses world leaders at the UN: Climate change is real

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio brought attention to climate change Tuesday by addressing world leaders meeting at the UN Climate Summit in New York.

"I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems. I believe that mankind has looked at climate change in that same way," DiCaprio told the UN Climate Summit . "As if pretending that climate change wasn't real would somehow make it go away, but I think we all know better than that now."

DiCaprio's remarks come days after the actor stood with thousands in New York City's People's Climate March on Sunday. The march brought in an estimated 400,000 people seeking to put an end to global warming.

"Every week we're seeing new and undeniable climate events, evidence that accelerated climate change is here right now," DiCaprio added in his speech. "None of this is rhetoric, and none of it is hysteria. It is fact."

Related: Scenes from #FloodWallStreet: 'Corporate captalism = Climate chaos'

DiCaprio documented the summit by joining Instagram Tuesday morning and snapping photos of the general assembly and with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The "Wolf of Wall Street" actor spoke at the summit after being designated as a UN Messenger of Peace with a special focus on climate change by the Secretary-General.

DiCaprio finished his speech by calling on the assembly to act on climate change, and to do so now.

"Honored delegates, leaders of the world, I pretend for a living but you do not," DiCaprio said. "The people made their voices heard on Sunday around the world and the momentum will not stop, but now it's your turn. The time to answer humankind's greatest challenge is now."

Related: Thousands rally for climate change action

Similarly, actress Emma Watson addressed the UN on Saturday in order to bring attention to the issue of gender equality .

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Reflections on Leonardo DiCaprio’s New Climate Change Film, Before the Flood

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Leonardo DiCaprio’s new film, Before the Flood , is a sobering work, at once beautifully crafted and painful to watch.  DiCaprio guides the audience on a global tour of how climate change and the forces driving it are upending human lives and fraying the biological fabric of the planet.  We see the vast scale of humanity’s footprint across the globe, from smog-choked Beijing to the blackened moonscape of the tar sands in Canada; the toll of rising seas from Miami to the Pacific islands; the melting of the Greenland ice sheet; and the destruction of great rainforests for cattle ranching in the Amazon and palm oil plantations in Indonesia.  It’s a reminder of the enormity and complexity of the forces driving climate change.

The many experts DiCaprio interviews make it clear that the worst is yet to come unless humanity makes a radical U-turn in the way we produce and consume energy, food and just about everything else. 

In fact, the film’s leitmotif is Hieronymus Bosch’s iconic painting The Garden of Earthly Delights , which opens and closes the film. The left panel of the triptych depicts the Garden of Eden; the large central panel depicts the dominion of humankind over the planet and its diverse plants and animals; the right panel takes us to a doomscape of blasted earth, fire, torture and death. In DiCaprio’s view, humanity is poised to fall from the central panel into the right – which looks remarkably like the Canadian tar sands DiCaprio flies over early on in the film.

For me, one part of the film hit closest to home:

As a backpacker and forest researcher some 30 years ago, I roamed widely through the vast and still-pristine rainforests on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.  In the mid-1990s, I researched the Leuser ecosystem of Sumatra’s Aceh province, then the focus of the largest donor-supported rainforest conservation project on Earth.  Leuser’s forests, tigers, elephants and rhinos faced many threats back then, but there was much left to conserve. And there was optimism that resources and political will were finally at hand to do the job.

Two decades after I traversed those forests, DiCaprio flies into Leuser and is dismayed by the fires and haze, and by the seemingly endless rows of oil palm trees. It hits home. I have a coffee table book from 1990 on Leuser called Indonesian Eden . Much of that “Eden,” however, was cast into Bosch’s doomscape by the turn of the millennium. The 2004 tsunami, which killed 250,000 people in Aceh, brought fresh misery.

There has been some progress in Indonesia. Some major consumer goods companies and their palm oil suppliers in Indonesia have taken zero-deforestation pledges . Pulp and paper producers have made similar commitments. But it is largely too late for Sumatra. Ancient primary rainforests , once destroyed, cannot be restored to anything approaching their previous condition on a time scale meaningful for humanity. Unfortunately, there have been no consequences for the irreparable harm these companies have caused.

The film reminds us that the science is clear on climate change. What is still missing, despite the momentum of the Paris Agreement on climate change , is sufficient political will. Hopefully Before the Flood will encourage citizens to demand more attention and action from our leaders and politicians.

Before the Flood premieres on the National Geographic Channel on October 30 th and can also be streamed online from the film’s website .

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Leonardo DiCaprio brings attention to climate change during Oscar victory speech: 'It's real and is happening now'

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Leonardo DiCaprio took home his first Best Actor in a Leading Role Academy Award Sunday night for his turn in The Revenant , and used his platform to deliver an acceptance speech decrying climate change.

DiCaprio, previously nominated four times, had kind words for his director, Alejandro Iñárritu, and co-star Tom Hardy, but used the bulk of his speech to bring attention to climate change. DiCaprio noted that The Revenant is about "man's relationship with the natural world," and as 2015 was the hottest year in recorded history, production had to be moved to the "southern tip of this planet just to find snow." Climate change is "real and it is happening now and it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species," he said. "We need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating."

DiCaprio called on people to "support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people most affected by this, for our children's children, and the voices drowned out by the politics of greed."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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Entertainment

Leo's Oscars Acceptance Speech Gets Political

It has finally happened, you guys. We have witnessed a historic moment. Well, we witnessed many historic moments, but Leonardo DiCaprio winning an Oscar for the first time just felt like a victory for all of us, you know? DiCaprio has been nominated for an Oscar so many times, only to go home empty-handed, that it has reached meme levels. So to see him finally stand on that stage with a golden statue in his hand was just so heartwarming. Unsurprisingly, when you look at the transcript of DiCaprio's Oscar acceptance speech (which he must surely have been planning for the last 10 years), you see how it's not just thanking people and then breezing off the stage. No, the 41-year-old actor took a moment to speak about a cause that's very close to his heart: environmentalism and climate change.

I mean, don't get me wrong. DiCaprio did thank a lot of people, some of them collectively. (Like his friends. "You know who you are.") But working on The Revenant highlighted a cause that DiCaprio supports when the cameras stop rolling, and he wasn't going to let that go unmentioned in his speech. Not when he finally had the eyes of the world upon him for more than just making Sad Leo at the Oscars GIFs. Reading his speech should be enough to inspire fans to give environmentalism the same attention that we've given to DiCaprio's numerous losses over the years. However, even if it doesn't, the fact that he would draw attention away from himself and toward a good cause is just so DiCaprio that it really makes me feel like he deserved this award for more than one reason.

You can watch the video of the speech here . Check out his full speech below:

Thank you all so very much. Thank you to the Academy. Thank you to all of you in this room. I have to congratulate the other incredible nominees this year. The Revenant was the product of the tireless efforts of an unbelievable cast and crew. First off, to my brother in this endeavor, Mr. Tom Hardy. Tom, your talent on screen can only be surpassed by your friendship off screen … thank you for creating a transcendent cinematic experience. Thank you to everybody at Fox and New Regency … my entire team. I have to thank everyone from the very onset of my career … To my parents; none of this would be possible without you. And to my friends, I love you dearly; you know who you are.

And lastly, I just want to say this: Making The Revenant was about man's relationship to the natural world. A world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people out there who would be most affected by this. For our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed. I thank you all for this amazing award tonight. Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted. Thank you so very much.

Watch Leonardo DiCaprio's Powerful Speech on Climate Change at the UN

Days after joining 400,000 citizens in a call for action on climate change at the People's Climate March in downtown Manhattan, actor Leonardo DiCaprio offered world leaders a glaring choice on climate change. World leaders have a stark decision before them on climate change, he said: "You can make history or you can be vilified by it."

DiCaprio appeared as one of many speakers slated to deliver remarks at the U.N.'s Climate Summit in New York City. 

"None of this is rhetoric and none of this is hysteria. It is fact," said DiCaprio, who serves as the United Nations' "messenger of peace." "As an actor, I pretend for a living. I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems. I believe that mankind has looked at climate change in the same way, as a fiction," he said. "But I think we all know better than that now."

"This is not a partisan debate, it is a human one," he continued. "Clean air and a livable climate are inalienable human rights."

Here are DiCaprio's full remarks:

Thank you, Mr. Secretary-General, your excellencies, ladies and gentleman, and distinguished guests. I'm honored to be here today. I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned citizen, one of the 400,000 people who marched in the streets of New York on Sunday, and the billions of others around the world who want to solve our climate crisis.

Leonardo DiCaprio's Oscar speech about climate change

As expected, Leonardo DiCaprio won his first Oscar ever for "The Revenant." Instead of talking about himself, he used his speech to address climate change.

Story by Ian Phillips and editing by Adam Banicki

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Leonardo Dicaprio's - Great Speech on Climate Change