Actor and environmental campaigner Alec Baldwin has demanded that “certain sacrifices” be made to save the planet for future generations.
Baldwin, who was speaking on Tuesday at the U.N. headquarters, did not specify what those sacrifices might be. But with a personal fortune estimated at $65 million it is unlikely that he will find making them too troublesome.
“This may be our last chance in the next 20 years to take action against global warming”, Alec Baldwin warned, while chairing a panel on threats to “Forest Defenders” at the annual meeting of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
According to the Associated Press, he said:
“There are things that we just can’t imagine that can happen in terms of the food supply, in terms of climate change, in terms of flooding in coastal areas in the United States and beyond,” he said. “The time is now to make certain sacrifices … so that this planet will remain habitable” for today’s children.
Baldwin said that his passion for preserving the planet had been sparked by meeting indigenous peoples at the 2015 UN climate conference in Paris. Indigenous people, he said, understand better than anyone else the places where they live. This is why, he claimed, those in power want to “get rid of them by whatever means necessary” in order to gain control of their natural resources.
Whatever the merits of his case about the plight of indigenous people, Baldwin is surely stretching the truth when he claims that his Paris encounter with them was what fired his passion for environmentalism.
It is, after all, a matter of public record that Baldwin has campaigned for leftist causes most of his adult life. He has been an animal rights activist and supporter of PETA for at least two decades. And he was hosting anti-fracking events years before the Paris summit.
Alec Baldwin agreed with one of his fellow panellists – Rukka Sombolinggi, secretary-general of Indonesia’s Indigenous People’s Alliance of the Archipelago – that the time had come to stop “talking and negotiating” and start acting.
According to AP:
[Sombolinggi] said world leaders will “have to stop talking and negotiating” at the U.N. climate summit coming up in September. “They just really need to agree on actions” to preserve “mother Earth,” Sombolinggi said.
Baldwin, who plays U.S. President Donald Trump on the NBC comedy series “Saturday Night Live,” interjected to laughter: “Can’t you move here and run for senator?”
“We need someone to say, ‘No more talking,’” he said. “We need you in Washington!”
Baldwin said Americans feel they are going to do the right thing because of their resources and economic power, “but you find that we’re becoming more and more like other parts of the world where anything goes, regulations being set aside.”
Baldwin’s comments were in marked contrast to those of his President, who earlier this week marked Earth Day by arguing that “a strong market economy” is what protects the environment.
According to the Guardian:
“Environmental protection and economic prosperity go hand in hand,” Trump said in his message for Earth Day, a global event held to support environmental protection annually since 1970.
“A strong market economy is essential to protecting our critical natural resources and fostering a legacy of conservation. My administration is committed to being effective stewards of our environment while encouraging opportunities for American workers and their families.”
Baldwin will likely find something angry to say about this in his next Saturday Night Live skit.
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