Actor and environmental activist Mark Ruffalo believes President Obama could do a lot more on climate change.
The Avengers star has signed on to executive produce and narrate a new documentary, Dear President Obama, that will challenge the president’s record on climate change and environmental policy, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Obama and California Gov. Jerry Brown are “almost worse than climate change deniers,” Ruffalo told THR, adding:
They are not honest in another way that’s much more harmful to us. They are taking the political will that we need to make these changes and they are dulling the knife edge of it. They are making people go to sleep. They are making people think that dealing with climate change is being taken care of. In fact, renewable energy is going to be useless if we pull all of this carbon out of the ground and burn it.
The documentary will reportedly explore the methods the United States can use to transition to renewable energy as well as the negative effects of hydro-fracking and global warming.
Ruffalo has long been an environmental advocate, having formed several nonprofit organizations and renewable energy campaigns.
In June, the actor teamed up with Leonardo DiCaprio to launch the “100%” clean energy initiative. In October, the actor formally called on Gov. Brown to end hydro-fracking in California alongside his nonprofit Water Defense organization. And earlier this month, Ruffalo formed the Hollywood super group Hollywood United for a Healthy California to urge Brown to move the state toward 100 percent renewable energy sources.
However, with this new film, the focus is squarely on President Obama.
“When you have the president saying that climate change is absolutely for real and we must do something about it, and then in the next breath he says we must start drilling in the Arctic circle even, there’s a huge disconnect, a cognitive dissonance,” Ruffalo told THR. “His own scientists are telling him we have to keep that carbon in the ground otherwise we are doomed.”
Ruffalo reportedly met Dear President Obama director Jon Bowermaster several years ago while the pair were fighting to end hydro-fracking in New York. Bowermaster directed a similar film then, called Dear Governor Cuomo, urging the governor to end fracking in the state.
Ruffalo told THR that this film will “implore President Obama to stop this drill, baby, drill all of the above energy policy that he has taken our country on.”
“You can’t have it both ways,” the actor said. “You can’t keep pushing to take all the carbon out of the earth, which will be burned, while at the same time saying you believe in climate science.”