Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio flew an additional 8,000 miles from France to New York and back to accept an award on climate change.
The actor suffered a massive blow on his carbon footprint when he took one jet from the Cannes Film Festival to New York City to attend the green awards ceremony, before hopping on board a second jet for a fund-raising event back in Cannes the following evening.
The New York awards ceremony was the Riverkeeper Fishermen’s Ball at Chelsea Piers, where he was honoured by the clean-water advocacy group and fellow actor Robert De Niro for his efforts to raise awareness on climate change.
His foundation also pledged $15 million at the World Economic Forum to help environmental causes.
Mr DiCaprio was back in France 24 hours later to give a speech at the celebrity-packed amfAR’s Cinema Against AIDS gala alongside Uma Thurman, Katy Perry, Heidi Klum and Orlando Bloom.
During his Oscar acceptance speech in 2016, where he scooped his first award for his role in “The Revenant”, Mr DiCaprio said: “Climate change is real. It is happening right now, it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species.”
Environmental analyst Robert Rapier told Fox News that the actor’s movie-star lifestyle, complete with jets and yachts, “diminishes his moral authority to lecture others on reducing their own carbon emissions”.
On social media, one user said there is “one rule for them and one for everybody else”. David Vance, a right-wing political commentator, called Mr DiCaprio “shameless” on Twitter.
Mr DiCaprio, as the United Nations Messenger of Peace, spoke as a “concerned citizen” at the opening Climate Summit in 2014 about droughts, methane rising from the ocean floor, dramatic weather events and melting ice.
“As an actor I pretend for a living. I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems,” he said. “I believe mankind is looking at climate change in that same way, as if it were a fiction. As if pretending climate change were not real, it would somehow make it go away. But we know better than that now.”
