ENGLISH SPEECH | LEONARDO DICAPRIO: Climate Change (English Subtitles) — Transcript

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1. 0:10I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned citizen – one of the 400,000
2. 0:17people who marched in the streets of New York on Sunday and the billions of others around
3. 0:22the world who want to solve our climate crisis.
4. 0:26As an actor, I pretend for a living.
5. 0:29I play fictitious characters, often solving fictitious problems.
6. 0:34I believe that mankind has looked at climate change in that same way, as if it were fiction,
7. 0:41as if pretending the climate change wasn’t real would somehow make it go away.
8. 0:46But I think we all know better than that now.
9. 0:49Every week we’re seeing new and undeniable climate events, evidence that accelerated
10. 0:55climate change is here right now.
11. 0:57Droughts are intensifying.
12. 0:58Our oceans are acidifying with methane plumes rising up from the ocean floor.
13. 1:02We are seeing extreme weather events and the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets melting
14. 1:07at unprecedented rates, decades ahead of scientific projections.
15. 1:13None of this is rhetoric and none of it is hysteria.
16. 1:16It is fact.
17. 1:18The scientific community knows it.
18. 1:20Industry knows it.
19. 1:22Governments know it.
20. 1:23Even the United States military knows it.
21. 1:26The Chief of the US Navy’s Pacific Command Admiral Samuel Locklear recently said that
22. 1:30climate change is our single greatest security threat.
23. 1:35My friends, this body, perhaps more than any other gathering in human history now faces
24. 1:44this difficult but achievable task.
25. 1:47You can make history or you will be vilified by it.
26. 1:52To be clear this is not about just telling people to change their light bulbs or to buy
27. 1:56a hybrid car.
28. 1:58This disaster has grown beyond the choices that individuals make.
29. 2:02This is now about our industries and our governments around the world taking decisive large-scale
30. 2:08action.
31. 2:10Now must be our moment for action.
32. 2:14We need to put a price tag on carbon emissions and eliminate government subsidies for all
33. 2:19oil coal and gas companies.
34. 2:21We need to end the free ride that industrial polluters have been given in the name of a
35. 2:24free market economy.
36. 2:25They do not deserve our tax dollars.
37. 2:28They deserve our scrutiny for the economy itself will die if our ecosystems collapse.
38. 2:34The good news is that renewable energy is not only achievable but good economic policy.
39. 2:45This is not a partisan debate.
40. 2:46It is a human one.
41. 2:48Clean air and a livable climate are inalienable human rights.
42. 2:52And solving this crisis is not a question of politics.
43. 2:56It is a question of our own survival.
44. 3:00This is the most urgent of times and the most urgent of messages.
45. 3:05Honored delegates, leaders of the world, I pretend for a living but you do not.
46. 3:12The people made their voices heard on Sunday around the world and the momentum will not
47. 3:17stop.
48. 3:18But now it is your turn.
49. 3:19The time to answer humankind’s greatest challenge is now.
50. 3:24We beg of you to face it with courage and honesty.
51. 3:28Thank you.