Leonardo DiCaprio Uses Best-Actor Speech to Blast the “Politics of Greed”

Prensa Internacional/ZUMAPRESS.com


In one of the most widely expected wins of the night, Leonardo DiCaprio took out Best Actor at the 88th Annual Academy Awards Sunday night for his role in The Revenant. DiCaprio used his acceptance speech to call out global leaders for climate inaction—capping off a night that was already fueled by the biting and brilliant political performance by moderator Chris Rock.

“Climate change is real, it is happening right now,” DiCaprio said, to applause. “It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.”

He went on: “We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations.” Watch the clip below:

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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