After winning his first Oscar at the 88th Academy Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday, actor Leonardo DiCaprio immediately launched into a politically charged speech about 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,” the frequent flyer and environmental activist told the audience. “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,” said DiCaprio. “It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.” He added:
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.
DiCaprio concluded, “Let us not take this planet for granted.”
Watch the speech below:
The actor made the remarks after winning the Oscar for Best Actor for his leading role in The Revenant. The accolade was DiCaprio’s first Oscar after five nominations.
The Revenant director Alejandro González Iñárritu also took home an Oscar on Sunday, winning a Best Director award for the second year in a row.
Iñárritu, who won the award for last year’s Birdman, said Sunday he hoped the next generation of creators would make “the color of our skin be as relevant of the length of our hair.”
The Mexican-born director used his acceptance speech last year to push for immigration reform.
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