Leonardo DiCaprio Uses Oscar Acceptance Speech to Beg for Action on Global Warming

Upon being named winner of the 2016 Oscar for best actor for his leading role in the Alejandro Iñárritu-directed film “The Revenant,” Leonardo DiCaprio, a committed environmental activist with a long record of backing campaigns, led the political charge at the awards show and pleaded with listeners to “work collectively together and stop procrastinating” and take action to stop climate change.

“Making ‘The Revenant’ was about man’s relationship to the natural world, a world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history,” DiCaprio said. “Our production needed to move to the southern 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.”

DiCaprio even urged support for political candidates who do not rely on corporations and their interest groups to finance their campaigns. That appears to be an endorsement of candidates such as Sen. Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein, as opposed to Hillary Clinton and most of the Republicans.

“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 people 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. … Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted.”

DiCaprio’s message was echoed by Jenny Beavan, who won the costume design Oscar for “Mad Max: Fury Road”: “It could be horribly prophetic, ‘Mad Max’ — if we’re not kinder to each other, and if we don’t stop polluting our atmosphere … it could happen.”

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.