Leonardo DiCaprio

Why Leonardo DiCaprio is a poor role model for saving the planet

TORONTO - Two events last week illustrated the enormous misunderstanding many people who think they’re saving the planet have with regard to man-made climate change, aka global warming.

The first was the one-day UN climate change summit in New York, and the protest marches leading up to it.

The second was Apples’ release of its iPhone 6.

The irony, lost on many who no doubt lined up to buy the latest iPhone before rushing out to join the protests (leaving a tsunami of litter in their wake) was this.

If, according to their own logic, they want to save the planet, they have to stop buying the latest version of the latest cell phone, when the one they have is still perfectly usable.

Same goes for the latest laptops, flatscreen TVs, cars, indeed all consumer goods.

Because if the theory of man-made global warming is correct, in order to save the planet, we have to stop consuming it.

We have to stop obediently bowing to the marketing concept of “planned obsolescence”, that everything we own needs to be replaced by a newer, better, faster version every couple of years.

We have to stop buying things we don’t need — all of which require fossil fuels to invent, manufacture and transport.

This is particularly true of cell phones, computers, flatscreen televisions, electric cars and, ironically, wind turbines and solar panels, that, in addition to requiring fossil fuels to be manufactured and transported, also need rare earth metals to work.

Most of the world’s rare earth metals are mined in China, under atrocious conditions which cause widespread damage to the environment and human health.

That’s why uber-rich Hollywood celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio — the UN’s recently-appointed “messenger of peace” for climate change, who gave a keynote address at the UN climate summit in New York — cannot be taken seriously in what they preach. Why not? 

 

Because they consume far too much, fly far too much.

Because they have too many mansions and luxury condos.

Because they work for an industry dedicated to conspicuous consumption, from the designer gowns and jewelry they constantly promote on the red carpets of the world, to the countless product placements in endless movies encouraging us to buy, buy, buy.

To be fair, DiCaprio has had his own environmental foundation since 1998.

But he also rented the world’s fifth-largest yacht so he could watch the World Cup in Brazil in the lap of luxury, making it clear he doesn’t understand the issue he presumes to lecture the rest of us about.

DiCaprio — as he did in a simple-minded video on climate change he recently narrated called Carbon — may honestly believe the great polluters of the Earth are fossil fuel companies, motivated solely by greed.

But that misses the point, which is that while that industry may be everything he says it is, the ultimate polluters are us.

We create the demand for the goods and services invented, manufactured and transported by the use of fossil fuels.

The greenest people on Earth are the poor.

That’s because they live in small apartments (if that) rather than McMansions, take public transit rather than drive cars, never fly anywhere on vacation or business, don’t consume exotic foods and can’t afford an iPhone.

Because they consume less, their carbon footprints are minuscule compared to the DiCaprios of the world, and the Al Gores, and the countless self-proclaimed “green” CEOs, along with all the other “one percenters” who are environmental posers.

As George Monbiot, the world’s most famous climate change journalist, writes in Heat, How To Stop The Planet From Burning, on the issue of flying alone: “Thinking like ethical people, dressing like ethical people, decorating our homes like ethical people, makes not a damn bit of difference unless we also behave like ethical people. When it comes to flying, there seems to be no connection between intention and action.”

Indeed, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change itself is not an ethical organization.

Not with its never-ending conferences in the world’s most exotic locales, where high-flying delegates spending other people’s money generate enough greenhouse gas emissions in 12 days to power a mid-sized African country for a year.

The bottom line is simple and inescapable.

If the theory of man-made global warming is correct, then the only way to slow it is to consume less, which many of the people telling us to consume less are not prepared to do themselves.

And that, is the very definition of hypocrisy.