On September 23, 2014 Leonardo DiCaprio addressed one of the largest gatherings of government, business and civil society leaders in history, at the United Nations Climate Summit.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Leonardo to serve as a United Nations Messenger of Peace for Climate, calling the actor a "new voice for climate advocacy."
The Sunday, both both Ban Ki-moon and Leonardo participated in the 400,000-strong People's Climate March through the streets of New York City, drawing renewed public attention to the escalating climate crisis.
The speech garnered a record-breaking 1.6 million views on the United Nations channel and was echoed in over 45,000 news articles across the globe.
Below is the full text of the speech:
Thank you, Mr. Secretary-General, your excellencies, ladies and gentleman, and distinguished guests.
I'm honored to be here today, I stand before you not as an expert but as a concerned citizen, one of the 400,000 people who marched in the streets of New York on Sunday, and the billions of others around the world who want to solve our climate crisis.
As an actor I pretend for a living.
I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems.
I believe mankind has looked at climate change in that same way: as if it were a fiction, as if pretending that climate change wasn't real would somehow make it go away.