Address
by UN Messenger of Peace Leonardo DiCaprio at Climate Summit
September 23, 2014
Thank you, Mr. Secretary-General,
your excellencies, ladies and gentleman, and distinguished guests. I’m honored
to be here today, I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned
citizen, one of the 400,000 people who marched in the streets of New York on
Sunday, and the billions of others around the world who want to solve our
climate crisis.
As an actor I pretend for a
living. I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems.
I believe humankind has looked at
Climate Change in that same way: as if it were a fiction, happening to someone
else’s planet, as if pretending that Climate Change wasn’t real would somehow
make it go away.
But I think we know better than
that. Every week, we’re seeing new and undeniable Climate Events, evidence that
accelerated Climate Change is here now. We know that droughts are intensifying,
our oceans are warming and acidifying, with methane plumes rising up from
beneath the ocean floor. We are seeing extreme weather events, increased
temperatures, and the West Antarctic and Greenland ice-sheets melting at
unprecedented rates, decades ahead of scientific projections.
None of this is rhetoric, and
none of it is hysteria. It is fact. The scientific community knows it, Industry
and Governments know it, even the United States military knows it. The Chief of
the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Locklear, recently said that
Climate Change is our single greatest security threat.
My Friends, this body - perhaps
more than any other gathering in human history - now faces that difficult task.
You can make history...or be vilified by it.
To be clear, this is not about
just telling people to change their light bulbs or to buy a hybrid car. This
disaster has grown BEYOND the choices that individuals make. This is now about
our industries, and governments around the world taking decisive, large-scale
action.
I am not a scientist, but I don’t
need to be. Because the world’s scientific community has spoken, and they have
given us our prognosis, if we do not act together, we will surely perish.
Now is our moment for action
We need to put a pricetag on
carbon emissions, and eliminate government subsidies for coal, gas, and oil
companies. We need to end the free ride that industrial polluters have been
given in the name of a free-market economy, they don’t deserve our tax dollars,
they deserve our scrutiny. For the economy itself will die if our eco-systems
collapse.
The good news is that renewable
energy is not only achievable but good economic policy. New research shows that
by 2050 clean, renewable energy could supply 100% of the world’s energy needs
using EXISTING TECHNOLOGIES, and it would create millions of jobs.
This is not a partisan debate; it
is a human one. Clean air and water, and a livable climate are inalienable
human rights. And solving this crisis is not a question of politics. It is our
moral obligation - if, admittedly, a daunting one…
We only get one planet. Humankind
must become accountable on a massive scale for the wanton destruction of our
collective home. Protecting our future on this planet depends on the conscious
evolution of our species.
This is the most urgent of times,
and the most urgent of messages.
Honored delegates, leaders of the
world, I pretend for a living.
But you do not. The people made
their voices heard on Sunday around the world and the momentum will not stop.
And now it’s YOUR turn, the time to answer the greatest challenge of our
existence on this planet... is now.
I beg you to face it with
courage. And honesty. Thank you. |
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