11.11.22 Happy Birthday Leonardo, Messenger of Peace.
Leonardo Di Caprio is the international ambassador of Climate Change, supporting important goals around the world.
DiCaprio was designated as the United Nations Messenger of Peace for Climate Change in 2014.
In 2014 he started his effort in spreading the world about the urgent need to protect our shared humanity. And it doesn't stop there: he also sits on the board of several environmental organisations including WWF, the Natural Resources Defense Council, International Fund for Animal Welfare, Pristine Seas and Oceans 5.
Since 2015 he joined United Nations in their 13th Climate Action goals, participating at the Climate Conference in Paris.
He invested in multiple company to contribute decarbonizing the planet high emitting sectors is critical to mitigate global warming and inspiring further action to decarbonize hard-to-abate sector.
Oil & Gas, Steel and Cement are three of the most carbon-intensive industries, their direct emissions representing more than 1/4 of global CO2 emissions.
He’s currently starring in Netflix’s climate catastrophe parody Don’t Look Up, and was spotted attending COP26 in Glasgow last November, but Hollywood superstar Leonardo DiCaprio has been using his stardom to fight for the preservation of the environment for nearly 25 years. Here’s everything you need to know about one of the world’s most high profile climate activists.
Young Leo was a nature lover
Acting wasn’t the only career on the cards for a young Leonardo DiCaprio; he also fancied himself as a marine biologist, but fate intervened when he bagged his first acting role at the age of just five. As a child, he first became aware of the plight of the planet when he watched documentaries about the destruction of the rainforests, something which has clearly stuck with him over the years.
Meeting Al Gore
In 1998, a 24-year-old DiCaprio went to the White House to meet the then US Vice President Al Gore, who is well-known for speaking out about the climate crisis. The aim of the meeting was specifically to discuss global warming, and DiCaprio cites the meeting as a landmark moment for his climate activism.
He established his environmental foundation at the age of 24
The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF) was established that same year, when the actor was fresh out of his starring role as Jack in the blockbuster movie Titanic. The foundation’s initial mission was to protect the Earth’s last wild places and to find ways of achieving a harmonious relationship between humanity and the natural world. It now supports over 35 innovative conservation projects around the world that protect fragile ecosystems and key species.
Leo and documentaries
In 2007, DiCaprio produced and narrated his first conservation documentary. Titled The Eleventh Hour, it is a commentary on the state of the environment all over the world at the time, and includes interviews with experts from physicist Stephen Hawking and oceanographer Sylvia Earle, to Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai and former leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev. DiCaprio has since been involved in further documentaries, including narrating Ice And Fire (about global warming), and producing Water Planet and Global Warning.
Leo and the United Nations
DiCaprio was designated as the United Nations Messenger of Peace for Climate Change in 2014. And it doesn’t stop there: he also sits on the board of several environmental organisations including WWF, the Natural Resources Defense Council, International Fund for Animal Welfare, Pristine Seas and Oceans 5. In addition, he has taken a keen interest in renewable energy, and is an advisor for The Solutions Project, an organisation that scales up the adoption of clean power.
Leo’s climate Oscar acceptance speech
When accepting his Best Actor award for The Revenant in 2016, DiCaprio used his platform to address the issues close to his heart: ‘The Revenant was about man's relationship to the natural world — the world that we collectively felt in 2015 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. ‘I thank you all for this amazing award tonight. Let us not take this planet for granted; I do not take this night for granted.’ If only all Hollywood actors were as dedicated as this to taking climate action...
