Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio used the Oscar stage to address the issue of climate change
Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio used the Oscar stage to make his fervent appeal for the environment. (Image by Ninha Morandini)
The pressing concerns of climate change found centre-stage at Oscars 2016 with Best Actor awardee Leonardo DiCaprio describing it as “the most urgent threat facing our entire species” and making an impassioned appeal to save the planet.
“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 in his acceptance speech at the glittering Oscar ceremony at Los Angeles Sunday night.
As millions across the globe watched the live telecast of the awards ceremony, one of the most watched events of the year, DiCaprio used the Oscar stage to make his fervent appeal for the environment. Making The Revenant — a survival drama about a fur trapper left for dead in the wilds of America in the 1800s — was about man’s relationship to the natural world, he said. “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.”
The Hollywood star, who won his first Oscar, said in his speech, “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.”
The actor, an outspoken advocate on issues related to the environment, recently visited India for a film he is making on climate change. At the Oscars, he once again succeeded in putting climate change in the headlines, as he ended by saying, “Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted.”
