When he meets with Indian environmentalist Sunita Narain, DiCaprio has to confront the unpleasant reality that our country’s outsized energy consumption is, as, Narain bluntly puts it, “going to put a hole in the planet.” His interviews extend beyond academics, scientists, activists and innovators to include President Obama, the Pope, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who appointed DiCaprio to be a UN Messenger of Peace and invited him to address the 2014 UN Climate Summit. Of course, because he’s a movie star, DiCaprio has better access than your average Everyman. But where Al Gore essentially played the professor, delivering a lecture, DiCaprio is instead a humble pupil, quizzing the world’s foremost experts about the impacts of climate change and the strategies we could use to mitigate them. As with An Inconvenient Truth, DiCaprio highlights solutions and makes the science accessible to the layperson. Together, they spent three years traveling the world to document the global impact of climate change, from ravaged rain forests to flooded cities, sinking islands, melting glaciers, endangered animals, and dying coral reefs.Īs bleak as that sounds, the film is not just a travelogue of manmade ecological calamity. What’s a passionate environmentalist to do? For DiCaprio, the answer was to team up with National Geographic and Stevens. “Try to talk to anyone about climate change and people just tune out.” A decade after Gore’s film, we’re still relying on fossil fuels while a political party rejects the science on man-made climate change even as extreme weather becomes the norm and carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere reach record highs, according to the World Meteorological Organization. It’s a tough sell, as DiCaprio ruefully admits. But he became an instant convert, resolving to learn everything he could about climate change and use his celebrity to educate others about the growing peril. As DiCaprio told People magazine, “Gore drew a picture of the planet, drew our atmosphere and said, ‘This is the most important crisis facing humanity.'”Īt the time, DiCaprio, then in his early 20s, had no idea what Gore was talking about. DiCaprio was at the White House chatting with then-Vice President Gore a few years before Gore made An Inconvenient Truth. Well, OK, not exactly just like the rest of us. So, to put this timely reminder on our collective radar, National Geographic is not only broadcasting the global television premiere of Before the Flood on October 30th at 9pm ET on National Geographic Channels in 171 countries and in 45 languages, they’re making the film available for free from October 30th through November 6th on iTunes, GooglePlay, Amazon, hulu, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Sony PlayStation, and elsewhere.ĭoes Before the Flood pick up where Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth left off? After all, DiCaprio first learned about the global warming crisis from Gore, just like millions of other Americans. The movie’s timing is critical on November 8th, we have the power to elect politicians who understand the science of climate change, grasp the gravity of the situation, and are willing to address the challenges it poses. Because, unlike the Titanic’s doomed passengers, we still have time - though just barely - to avoid a collision with catastrophe.īefore the Flood may be DiCaprio’s “all hands on deck!” moment, but the beauty of this film is that he delivers his urgent call for a course correction in a thoughtful, restrained manner, not a hair-on-fire panic. But in Before the Flood, the new climate change documentary DiCaprio made with Oscar-winning director Fisher Stevens and National Geographic, he leaves the ending up to us. In Titanic, you just knew his character was destined for a watery grave. We are a community of over one million parents united against air and climate pollution to protect our children’s health.įrom Titanic’s epic iceberg to Before the Flood‘s melting glaciers, Leonardo DiCaprio is the master of icy disasters.
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