Leonardo DiCaprio had delivered an impassioned speech about climate change before world leaders at the United Nations in April in New York.
He also co-produced and starred in a documentary committed to delivering the urgent message of climate change that has reversed half a billion year’s revolution. The documentary which has been directed by the Academy Award-winning documentarian Fisher Stevens was released on 30 October and is now available for free online streaming on YouTube.
The film was produced by a collaboration between Stevens, DiCaprio, James Packer, Brett Ratner, Trevor Davidoski, and Jennifer Davisson Killoran with Martin Scorsese as an executive producer.
Watch the whole documentary below:
The versatile actor plays a range of roles, interviewing, reporting on the catastrophic changes that are already impacting us.
Barack Obama, Pope Francis, Sunita Narain, John Kerry, and Elon Musk featured alongside Leonardo in the documentary.
Addressing the UN leaders, Leonardo had urged people to raise a collective consciousness to arrest the changes that are degrading our environment.
An upheaval, a massive change is required is required right now, one that leads to a collective consciousness, a new collective evolution of the human race, inspired and enabled by a sense of urgency from all of you.Leonardo DiCaprio at the UN Paris Agreement on Climate Change
One might wonder where does the Academy Award winning actor fit in a environmental documentary, but many wouldn’t know that the film that earned him accolades of a lifetime, The Revenant, was affected due to climate change.
The film which heavily depended on actual snowy locations instead of green screens had faced a dearth of snow.
In an interview, the director of The Revenant, Alejandro G Iñárritu told Grantland:
The snow melted down, literally, in front of our eyes. We experienced global warming; we were planning to shoot the ending scene in a location that supposedly will have snow.
The melting snow gave DiCaprio the frightful confrontation with climate change.
Daily News reported that the crew members were left distressed with extreme weather conditions from “hot to cold” in places which previously had an even tempered weather.
We had to go to southern tip of Argentina just to be able to find snow to complete the film.Leonardo Di Caprio told New York Daily News
DiCaprio also visited India, where almost seven million people depend on biomass as their only source of energy, as a part of the shoot to interview about the problems of the availability of affordable renewable source of energy for the poorer masses.
India which is the fourth largest reservoir of coal is the cheapest source of energy for millions of households which have poor access to energy resources, which in turn heavily contributes to climate change.
Can we revert the negative impacts of our own wrongdoings and reverse climate change?
“What haunts me is the last panel, with the planet in ruins, charred and blackened skies, if this was a movie we could write our way out of this mess, but real life isn’t a movie and we can’t pretend we know how this is going to end,” Leonardo laments.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)