Leonardo DiCaprio has used his fame and status as a United Nations Messenger for Peace to move the needle on climate change. But the question remains: Are world leaders listening?
While many of the U.N.’s “messengers” and “special envoys” use the honorific title for good will, for projects, and, needless to say, for publicity – DiCaprio earned his diplomatic title over the course of fifteen plus years as a self-styled “climate activist.” One poll names him as the most trusted voice on climate, even ahead of Greta Thunberg and Al Gore.
By age 24, Leonardo had already made over a dozen films and TV shows, including the acclaimed Romeo & Juliet. Titanic won 11 Oscars, including Best Picture.
DiCaprio decided – as some biographical stories tell it – to take on the crisis of climate change that he believed contributed to the sinking of the “unsinkable” ocean liner. He worked closely with director James Cameron, who was already a climate activist.
Because of the “in production” nature of the film he is currently working on, DiCaprio’s public relations firm, Sunshine Sachs, said that DiCaprio could not respond to our current questions, but there remains little question of his continuing commitment to environmental stewardship.
The film made him a mega-star. Its story of a warming ocean calving the iceberg that sank the “unsinkable” ocean liner, dooming 1,500 souls, also profoundly affected his attitude toward climate change.
Two years after Titanic was released, DiCaprio founded the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation to focus on the “convergence of, accelerating climate change, unprecedented loss of biodiversity, and increasing human health issues caused by a toxic environment.” He also met with then-Vice President Al Gore as part of a wider effort to motivate the U.S. to move forward on what he called, an “impending climate disaster.”
By 2019, Leonardo co-founded Earth Alliance, “to activate and mobilize a global response to the urgent threats that our planet is facing.” After providing more than $100 million in grants to protect the environment, these efforts culminated in the creation of another climate not-for-profit, named re:wild, which DiCaprio founded with conservationists. In 2014, then-Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed DiCaprio a United Nations Messenger of Peace asking the film idol to focus on climate. The Secretary General said he hoped DiCaprio’s fame would invigorate the climate accord negotiations scheduled to take place in Le Bourget, France in December 2015 – the location where Charles Lindbergh landed in the Spirit of Saint Louis after flying across the Atlantic.
“DiCaprio is a credible voice in the environmental movement and has a considerable platform to amplify its message,” Ban Ki-moon said, adding, “I am pleased he has chosen to add his voice to U.N. efforts to raise awareness of the urgency and benefits of acting now to combat climate change.”
DiCaprio’s response: “How we respond to the climate crisis in the coming years will likely determine the fate of humanity and our planet.”
Ban declared that DiCaprio’s first job in the role would be to speak with delegates from around the world on September 23, 2014 at the Climate Summit at U.N. Headquarters in New York. Leonardo’s message was stark and sober, but with a clear-eyed view of how to reverse the cycle of global warming.
“You can make history or you will be vilified by it,” DiCaprio told diplomats in the packed New York City General Assembly Hall.
“Every week, we’re seeing new and undeniable climate events, evidence that accelerated climate change is here now,” he said. “Droughts are intensifying, our oceans are acidifying, with methane plumes rising up from beneath the ocean floor,” he told diplomats gathered for the event.
“None of this is rhetoric, and none of it is hysteria. It is fact,” he said.
This reporter spoke with DiCaprio at the time of his U.N. visit. He was optimistic: “Renewable energy is not only achievable, but good economic policy.”
His message at the time – a year before the historic Climate Accord of 2015 was signed in Le Bourget, France, he conveyed both alarm and optimism: “We need to put a price tag on carbon emissions, and eliminate government subsidies for coal, gas, and oil companies.”
“We need to end the free ride that industrial polluters have been given in the name of a free-market economy, they don’t deserve our tax dollars, they deserve our scrutiny,” he said.
Climate Accord & “Before the Flood”
Three months after his U.N. Messenger for Peace debut, Leonardo was in Le Bourget, France. Negotiations were tense at the Conference of Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, known at COP21. There was great deal of skepticism that the accord would be adopted. As I walked the hangar in Le Bourget, delegates were worried that the accord had too many detractors. DiCaprio warned the leaders:”Our planet will not be saved unless we leave fossil fuels in the ground where they belong.”
Within hours, the mood changed. Then-President Barack Obama and Leonardo DiCaprio arrived and the sentiment in the aircraft hangar changed perceptibly. Just hours later, to thunderous applause and the tap of a gavel, almost 200 countries adopted a climate change plan.
DiCaprio witnessed the Paris victory, and went on to tape an interview with Ban Ki-moon for the documentary he was working on, Before the Flood.
The COP 21 accord was later signed by over 171 nations at U.N. Headquarters in New York in 2016.
Since then the accord has had its tribulations: the U.S., under President Donald Trump pulled out of the accord in November 2020 – and it was back in effect for the U.S. on President Joe Biden’s first day in office in 2021 – but, by all accounts, the agreement has fallen behind its goal of keeping global warming at bay.
Still, DiCaprio persisted. In December 2016, the U.N. Correspondents Association awarded him the Global Citizen of the Year award for his work on climate, and as the president of the association awarding him the prize, I spoke with him again.
DiCaprio’s documentary Before the Flood – for which he traveled to five continents and the Arctic – was shown at the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council Chamber in October 2016.
By 2019, DiCaprio was already seeing where the accord – and climate change – was going – and it was not enough.
“It’s been four years since the Paris agreement, it’s been four years,” he said at the Global Citizen festival in New York. “It has become clear that our political leaders have failed to live up to the promises that we celebrated that day, as our reliance on fossil fuels continues to hold our future hostage, our planet continues to warm, and the result: massive loss of biodiversity, rising sea levels, climate refugees, worsening storms…”
So, in 2021, the U.N. Messenger for Peace portrayed an astronomer, Dr. Randall Mindy, in Adam McKay’s dystopian movie, Don’t Look Up.
“It’s not that we’re not listening. We’re just not taking the necessary action,” DiCaprio said in a video about the film.
Speaking about Don’t Look Up writer-director Adam McKay, DiCaprio said, “I just love the way that he ended this film, because it makes us take a hard look at where we’re ultimately going, and the fact that a lot of this stuff is slowly becoming irreversible, and that we have this very finite window of 10 years to make this transition.”
Last year, in a report by National Research Group (NRG), a self-described “global insights and strategy firm at the intersection of entertainment and technology,” DiCaprio was “ranked #1 as the most trusted public figure on climate change and environmental issues,” surpassing politicians of all political affiliations and other climate advocates. He was ranked ahead of Greta Thunberg and Al Gore.
At the U.N., DiCaprio’s stewards keep in touch with him and call on him to boost their efforts on climate.
“Leonardo DiCaprio’s advocacy has been vital,” U.N. official Andi Gitow, head of Advocacy, Entertainment Industry Engagement, and Civil Society in the U.N. Department of Global Communication told Envoy magazine.
“It not only raises the profile and the messaging of U.N. priorities,” said Gitow, but it encourages “people to take action, which is a really essential part of our climate communications.”
“We will reach out to him at key moments, what we call milestone moments, to basically mobilize…he’s very much about action, and encouraging people to take action and offering them some of the steps to do so. His engagement speaks not only to the idea of education and raising awareness but also to driving change and driving action,” she said.
One of its current projects at the non-profit called re:wild focuses on conserving the Galápagos and Latin America’s Pacific archipelagos. He is also on the board of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Wildlife Fund, and he’s a global ambassador for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Currently, DiCaprio is filming in California, and information is scant: The movie is a Paul Thomas Anderson film with the working title “BC Project,” where filming began in California in early 2024, and moved to El Paso, Texas in June, with an expected release in the summer, 2025.
DiCaprio has been busy all this time making documentaries about climate change – practically non-stop.
His earlier 2007 documentary The 11th Hour, which he produced, co-wrote, and narrated, focused on global warming, deforestation and mass species extinction. Cowspiracy, released first in 2014 was edited in 2015 with DiCaprio as an executive producer, looks at animal agriculture and the role in climate change. The Ivory Game, released in 2016 delves into the illegal world of ivory trafficking and African elephants. We Go Green was made with DiCaprio about Formula E racing and their use of electric cars for racing events. Ice on Fire, a 2019 documentary was focused on efforts to tamp down on climate change. And, FIN, was a 2021 film about the extinction of sharks.
“High-profile U.N. advocates play a critical role in reaching wide audiences on critical global issues, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s efforts are a prime example,” the U.N.’s Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming told Envoy.
“His steadfast commitment to raising awareness about climate change, through his social media presence and insightful films, brings this urgent issue to the consciousness of tens of millions of people on a regular basis,” Fleming said.
How does he have an impact? Fleming was asked. “By leveraging his platform, he not only educates millions but can also inspire action, demonstrating the profound impact that influential voices can have in driving the conversation and promoting change, both on the ground and at the governmental level.”
Having submerged his identity into diverse real-life characters from the grifting star of “Catch Me if you Can,” Frank Abnegale, Jr. , to the monstrously lovable “Wolf of Wall Street,” Jordan Balfour, it is heartening to know that the real-life Leonardo DiCaprio is devoted to public good and saving the planet.
