This past Sunday, the day before Halloween, Leonardo DiCaprio released “Before the Flood”, his newest documentary about climate change, for free viewing on YouTube. In a recent tweet, DiCaprio stated that the documentary will be free to watch until Election Day, presumably wanting the documentary to further educate viewers of environmental issues so they can make an informed voting decision
The documentary focuses on DiCaprio’s personal travels from the Arctic Circle to Beijing to the Boreal Forests of Canada to Rainforest in Indonesia. DiCaprio’s travels focus on the impacts that climate change has on each community and environment. The documentary also includes personal interviews with worldwide leaders including Pope Francis and President Obama in which Dicaprio discusses the roles of the church and government in enforcing environmental change. The documentary ends with his formal address as the United Nations Messenger of Peace for Climate Change at New York City’s Paris Accord Signing.
Although the documentary is Dicaprio’s most recent environmental initiative, he has been working since 1998, at the age of 23, when he first found the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation which “through grantmaking, public campaigns and media initiatives, brings attention and needed funding to four focus areas—protecting biodiversity, oceans conservation, wildlands conservation, and climate change.” The foundatio’s website has a worldwide map pinpointing the projects the foundation supports through grants. Since 1998, LDF has awarded $59.6 million to over 65 organizations.
This also isn’t Dicaprio’s first foray into environmental documentaries. In 2007, he created, produced, co-wrote, and narrated “The 11th Hour”, a documentary which also highlighted global problems pertaining to environmental issues. In 2014, “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret” - a documentary about the influence of the farming industry on the climate - was released, with DiCaprio as the executive producer.
DiCaprio’s personal Twitter and Instagram profiles are both flooded with posts pertaining to environmental issues. News articles, links to other organizations and fundraisers, and posts promoting his own environmental work reach out to his 17 million followers.
Personally, as a strong supporter of environmental change, I believe that what DiCaprio is doing is extremely important. Climate change is perhaps the single most important issue that humans face today. The influence that it is having (and will have) on the environment affects communities, industries, and global economics. As a celebrity, DiCaprio’s role as an environmental activist is just as important, if not more so, than the role of politicians. Politicians have been scared of supporting environmental change in fear that they may lose the popular vote. By informing people of environmental issues, DiCaprio is highlighting the importance of electing leaders who support environmental change. In fact, DiCaprio states in the documentary that “the only thing that we can do is control what we do next… how we use our vote to tell our leaders that we know the truth.“ This, combined with the fact that the documentary was released a week before Election Day, is proof that DiCaprio is intelligently using his celebrity influence to create a more environmentally conscious nation.
