Oscar-winning actor and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio has invited a group of his Hollywood friends out to France for a glitzy climate change gala at the posh St. Tropez resort — but the celebrities expected to attend will likely burn up tons of fossil fuel in order to make it.
The 41-year-old Revenant star will host the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation Annual Gala to Fund Climate and Biodiversity Projects at the Bertaud Belieu Vineyards in St. Tropez on July 20, according to the Daily Mail.
Celebrities expected to attend reportedly include Cate Blanchett, Robert De Niro, Penelope Cruz, Kevin Spacey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charlize Theron, Kate Hudson and Scarlett Johansson, along with a full roster of other international pop stars and business mavens.
But those celebrities will need to find a way to get to the gala, of course, and, if they fly by private jet, they’re likely to burn up tons of carbon dioxide, an irony not lost on some environmental activists who have criticized DiCaprio for hosting the event so far from where a large number of the expected attendees live.
According to the Mail, if just one of those guests uses a private jet to travel the 12,000-mile round trip from Los Angeles to France, they will burn 86 tons of carbon dioxide. If they opt for a commercial flight, they’d put out just seven tons of CO2.
For comparison, the average American reportedly burns 19 tons of CO2 on flights per year.
Prices for the environmental gala run from £58,000 for the Ocean Steward Package — which includes dinner for 12 — to £125,000 for the Grand Earth Protector Package, which includes the same number of dinner reservations but at a table closer to DiCaprio.
The actor has repeatedly come under fire for his apparent love of private jet travel even as he’s made climate change his top priority as a philanthropist.
During his first Best Actor Oscar acceptance speech in February, DiCaprio urged millions watching at home and the world’s leaders to “stop procrastinating” on climate change, calling it “the most urgent threat facing our entire species.”
But just a few months later, DiCaprio used a private jet to travel 8,000 miles from the Cannes Film Festival in France to New York City, where he accepted an environmental award, and then back to France the following day.
Hacked internal emails from Sony divulged by WikiLeaks last year found that DiCaprio traveled by private jet six times over a six-week period in 2014, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the studio.
The actor is currently putting the finishing touches on a global warming documentary for Netflix.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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