Is Before the Flood guilty of hypocrisy? Have… | Little White Lies

Is Before the Flood guilty of hypocrisy? Have your say

04 Nov 2016

Words by Adam Woodward

Two men in winter coats and hats standing on a snowy landscape, conversing.
Two men in winter coats and hats standing on a snowy landscape, conversing.
We want to hear your thoughts on Leonar­do DiCaprio’s glo­be­trot­ting cli­mate change doc.

Ear­li­er this week Nation­al Geo­graph­ic released Before the Flood, a fea­ture-length eco-doc star­ring Leonar­do DiCaprio, for free online. In response we ran a short edi­to­r­i­al scru­ti­n­is­ing the film’s pro­duc­tion. The piece asked: is it inher­ent­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal for a Hol­ly­wood star with an already size­able car­bon foot­print to per­son­al­ly trav­el to five sep­a­rate con­ti­nents to tell the sto­ry of cli­mate change?

After all, Al Gore only need­ed Pow­er­Point to get the same mes­sage across almost exact­ly a decade ago. The result­ing film, An Incon­ve­nient Truth, won two Oscars, putting cli­mate change on the nation­al agen­da and lead­ing to the foun­da­tion of the Cli­mate Real­i­ty Project. We hope that Before the Flood has a sim­i­lar impact. But just maybe it will be remem­bered as an exor­bi­tant means of preach­ing to the con­vert­ed at a time when only a wil­ful­ly igno­rant few are pre­pared to deny the effects of this glob­al issue. Time will tell.

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For now, we’re keen to hear what you think. Not about cli­mate change per se, but rather the spe­cif­ic mer­its of a film like Before the Flood.

The arti­cle men­tioned above, enti­tled ​‘Leonar­do DiCaprio’s new cli­mate change doc reeks of hypocrisy’, gen­er­at­ed a live­ly debate on Face­book, with sev­er­al read­ers defend­ing DiCaprio while point­ing to his track record as a com­mit­ted con­ser­va­tion­ist. So is he, as a per­son of influ­ence, best off spread­ing the mes­sage to the mass­es, or should he instead be focused first and fore­most on lob­by­ing big busi­ness and gov­ern­ment? Is Leo right-on, self-right­eous, or some­thing else entire­ly? Are you inclined to agree with the below com­ments, or do you have a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent take? Either way, we want to hear from. Get in touch via Face­book or on Twit­ter @LWLies.

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