20140826_MM

Source: Sun News

URL: http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/3748274864001

Date: 26/08/2014

Event: Leonardo DiCaprio "is someone who does nothing but carbon dioxide belches"

Credit: Sun News, Climate Depot

People:

  • Jonathan Koehn: Regional sustainability coordinator, Boulder, Colorado
  • Ezra Levant: Journalist, author and media personality
  • Marc Morano: Founder and editor of Climate Depot
  • Senator Bernie Sanders: United States Senator, Vermont

[Video clip from the movie Carbon, showing a dark, sinister-looking robotic figure being threatened by rising green pillars.]

Bernie Sanders: But, given the severity of the problem right now, we're not moving fast enough. We are looking at a fight to save this planet. And we have got to be bold, we have got to be aggressive.

Jonathan Koehn: If it's not going to happen at the Federal level or the State level, we in the communities where the innovation occurs, where we're going to be on the front lines of the impact of climate change, need to take it into our own hands and make the changes that we need to see.

Ezra Levant: What a weird video! What's that from? No, it's not a new David Suzuki documentary or a Greenpeace production - it's from Leonardo DiCaprio's new film called Carbon. Produced and narrated by the dramatic actor, it calls for a carbon tax and refers to carbon dioxide as "poison". Well, why is DiCaprio trying to fight carbon, a natural element in the periodic table? And if he really means it, why does he live so

large, himself? Isn't he an environmental hypocrite? Marc Morano, founder of climatedepot.com, joins us, with more from Washington. Marc, welcome to the show,

Marc Morano: Thank you.

Ezra Levant: What do you make of one of the richest film-makers, celebrities, jet-setters in all of Hollywood saying "carbon for me but not for thee"? I mean, how many homes does this guy have? How many jets, cars and boats?

Marc Morano: At last count, he had a reported five mansions, and there's actually documented photographs of these things - these are not, you know, 3,000 square foot homes, these are 10,000 mega-mansions and beyond. He's been known to have a private jet, he charters helicopters - he, I believe, went on New Year's Eve, even chartered a boat for he and his friends, to celebrate New Year's, a few years back. This is someone who does nothing but carbon dioxide belches, if you will.

And the most outrageous thing he's been involved with was with Al Gore at the Oscar Ceremony. They walked out on stage - right before they did, it flashed on the screen: "Use public transit", and all these other little green tips. When was the last time Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio took a city bus? It is literally like the old Soviet Politburo - one way for the leaders, one way for the peons and the masses. And he considers all of us the masses.

Ezra Levant: Yeah, now, I think hypocrisy is always something good to point out, when someone asks us to follow their ideology, to show that they don't live like they actually believe it. I mean, if Leonardo DiCaprio actually believed that carbon was poison, he wouldn't do and live it up the way he does. But hypocrisy - there's worse sins than that, and one of them is if God forbid, we actually stopped using carbon. I mean, carbon dioxide - it's impossible to ban it any more than you could ban rocks, let's say. I mean, carbon dioxide's a natural element, but to call it "poison" - that's just junk science, that treats his audience like we're kindergarten kids, or something, right?

Marc Morano: Yeah, it's totally insulting. In this video Carbon - which, by the way, is perverting the language, we're talking about carbon dioxide, not black carbon and soot and other things - first of all, all life, we're carbon-based, as humans. We inhale oxygen, we exhale carbon dioxide at even 40,000 parts per million in our breath. Still, if carbon dioxide is poison, we are poison machines - humans are nothing but poison machines, going around.

He's bastardised the science, in this, and I did a story at Climate Depot - scientists who study carbon dioxide in the physical atmosphere will tell you, carbon dioxide is a trace essential gas in the atmosphere, that has quite literally been greening the planet Earth as it rises, and not causing extreme weather, not even causing global warming, as now every kid who graduates high school has never experienced it.

So, for him to do this, to bastardise the science and then come up with all this silly stuff about, you know, living the green lifestyle and keep carbon in the ground - well, he can't even keep himself on the ground, in a private jet, he's got to go up in the air, and I mean he won't even fly commercial. He's actually been quoted as saying "I will fly around the world to fight global warming" meaning as a mission, a spokesman for it, but he doesn't see the hypocrisy or the irony in saying that.

Ezra Levant: That's so weird - he must live in a very strange bubble. And, by the way, in that bubble there's plenty of carbon dioxide. Marc Morano, thanks for joining us from Washington, great to see you again.