“Try to have a conversation with anyone about climate change. People just tune out and the problem seems to be getting worse and worse,” says globetrotting Leonardo DiCaprio in the trailer for his new climate change documentary, “Before the Flood.”
The actor met with President Obama Monday at the White House, where the film got special screening.
DiCaprio apparently said “so little during the panel” that he it was like he wasn’t there, according to the Daily Beast. Although Obama managed to work in a joke at the actor’s expense about being mauled by a bear, a reference to DiCaprio’s Oscar-winning performance in “The Revenant.”
“The truth is, the more I’ve learned about this issue and everything that contributes to the problem, the more I realize how much I don’t know,” says DiCaprio, who was deemed a “messenger of peace” for climate change by the United Nations, in the “Flood” trailer.
It’s an admission probably more honest than the “Wolf of Wall Street” star intended.
While DiCaprio has enjoyed a seemingly unshakable image as a Prius-driving, Earth-saving do-gooder, his position has rightfully come into question recently. DiCaprio’s famous climate change foundation, the LDF (Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation), is currently involved with “the planet’s largest embezzlement case.”
DiCaprio himself is mentioned twice in a 136-page report on the embezzlement case being run by the Department of Justice. The case involves a misspent $3 billion by Malaysian sovereign wealth 1MDB. DiCaprio’s foundation, and the actor himself, received big donations and gifts from the group and one of its central figures, Jho Low — a “drinking buddy” of DiCaprio’s who has reportedly helped the actor finance projects.
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The embezzlement case seems to mean little to the president. DiCaprio and his film are receiving the red carpet treatment despite falling under recent scrutiny.
It’s nothing new for the star. He has long been having a one-sided conversation with the press about his “noble” endeavors. The truth is, long before the embezzlement scandal, the A-lister was a quiet hypocrite — preaching to the world about excess while having little regard for his own actions or rather large carbon footprint.
“We’re knowingly doing this. I just want to know how far we’ve gone and if there’s anything we can do to stop it,” DiCaprio says in his “Flood” trailer. The question is one he should be asking to a mirror.
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The star recently bought a “lavish Palm Springs retreat,” according to the Daily Mail. The “retreat” includes six bedrooms, seven and a half bathrooms, a swimming pool, a pool house, and a tennis court. He’ll need to plant a lot of trees to offset that place.
The actor also throws big parties for his friends. One of those was on the fifth-largest yacht in the world. He and twenty friends took over the 482-foot vessel to watch the World Cup. The yacht included two helicopter pads and a cinema.
And DiCaprio doesn’t just party or live in excess — he travels in it too. RadarOnline reported that Sony papers showed the actor taking six separate private round-trip jet flights in the course of just two months in 2014. It doesn’t take a scientist to know the harm done there.
DiCaprio also takes seemingly endless trips around the world, no doubt flying in similarly private fashion. In just a year, MailOnline reported, the climate change expert took 20 trips across the nation and around the world — mostly to vacations spots like the French Alps.
DiCaprio’s cold-cutting hypocrisy doesn’t stop with his own actions or the planet’s biggest embezzlement case.
His own foundation has been coming into question recently, beyond just their ties to 1MDB. The foundation is set up as a donor-advised fund (DAF) under the oversight of the CCF (California Community Foundation).
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This means the foundation is under no obligation to release any records to the press or donors. While the foundation raises millions from lavish parties (one where guests helicoptered in and ate whole sea bass after watching a short film about the dangers of overfishing, according to The Hollywood Reporter), they reveal to no one how their money is dispersed or how much of it goes to the actual cause of battling climate change.
DiCaprio’s passion is laudable, but when matched with an excessive personal life and questionable foundation, it becomes clear he has defied normal criticisms and responsibilities to his own beliefs because he’s a celeb. When President Obama throws his arm around the “messenger of peace” after a screening of “Before the Flood,” DiCaprio’s skirting of the hypocrite label will only be cemented further.
“The question is: Can we change our course in time?” asks DiCaprio in the film. Yes, we can — it will take people like yourself, Leo, to live up to the expectations you preach to the rest of society from your celebrity soap box.
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