Dear World, Did You Really Need Leo to Talk About Climate Change?

DiCaprio’s documentary was just downright disappointing.

Reporting on climate change often feels like shouting loudly into the void. I know this because I’m an environmental journalist.

Scientists have been telling us that the planet is in trouble for half a century, but that hasn’t slowed the rate at which the world’s dependence on fossil fuels has grown. It’s a tough dilemma, because on the one hand we can’t deny people development, which is a basic human right, while on the other, if we keep developing in the same way we have since the industrial revolution, we are guaranteeing the end of human kind.

So when I heard about Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary about climate change, I got excited. Important issues often need star power to get people to care or pay attention, and DiCaprio has been active in the environmental sphere for decades. It felt like a great opportunity to keep the conversation going.

But the documentary proved to be disappointing.

ICYMI, here’s the basic summary:

• The world is warming fast, and we’re not doing enough to stop it
• Our survival depends on our ability to curb climate change
• There are solutions out there
• If governments don’t make serious changes, then we’re doomed

Sound familiar? It should. Because hundreds of journalists and scientists have trying to tell you this for the longest time.

And that’s precisely the problem with DiCaprio’s documentary. He didn’t say anything new, he just stuck to the same old format. He had the resources to push the conversation further, to produce a revolutionary documentary, but didn’t. All he delivered was a superficial account of climate change and its consequences, with a dash of solutions.

Also Read: Watch Leo DiCaprio’s Urgent Message in Climate Change Documentary

DiCaprio’s examples of climate change – from melting glaciers to sinking islands in the Pacific – were cliché. This is problematic because it reinforces the idea that climate change is something that is happening in some faraway place, when the reality is everyone can see its effects around them.

Luckily, Sunita Narain, director general of the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi, was the documentary’s saving grace. She pushed the conversation to a point that many Americans are not comfortable hearing. And DiCaprio did seem uncomfortable, or at least like he didn’t really get the full sense of what she was trying to tell him.

Narain pointed out that at the individual level, one American’s consumption is equivalent to the consumption of 34 people in India. And this reality is having an impact on people all over India, especially famers whose months of labour go to waste when floods or droughts decimate their crops. So the US needs to set an example if it expects the world to follow, she told DiCaprio.

Many times it felt like DiCaprio was trying to establish his authority on the issue by proving he’d been working on this for decades. He included clips from his early days as an activist, and clips about Fox News reporters doubting his credibility, but for what? These clips added no value to the message that we need to take action now.

In the end, it became a documentary about Leonardo DiCaprio, the environmental activist. But that’s really not the point. Climate change isn’t about one individual, it’s about all of us.

Throughout the documentary, DiCaprio weaved in interviews with key global figures like US President Barack Obama, the Pope and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Just like the documentary, these figures did not contribute anything they hadn’t said before. So it felt like DiCaprio was just showing off his stardom and ability to get an audience with famous figures, rather than contributing anything of substance.

His discussion with the Pope wasn’t even shown in the documentary. DiCaprio had to summarise the discussion after the meeting, and only after having wasted a few minutes with shots of him entering and then leaving the Vatican.

And this is really disappointing, because as someone who has been advocating for the environment for so long, DiCaprio should know better.

It’s always good to get famous people to support important issues. Stars can get people to care about things they wouldn’t usually care about, like voting, or human rights issues, or the refugee crisis.

And DiCaprio definitely got the world’s attention, whether his documentary was good or not. That’s great. The question now is, what are we going to do about it?