By Brian Monteith – 5 minute read
LIKE MANY Hollywood A-listers, Leonardo DiCaprio is determined to be known as having more substance than just being an actor. And, like so many of his peers, he has thrown his weight into fighting climate change. It’s an easy win for them – it’s a pro-establishment argument to make and they don’t have to do anything tangible to show what great people they are.
The irony is palpable given that, in 2016, the Oscar-winner got slammed for munching 8,000 miles on a private jet to accept a green award, and is known to holiday on luxurious superyachts, a recent outing being in St Barts with his actress girlfriend Camila Morrone on the Vava II, the largest yacht manufactured in Britain. This megayacht is estimated to burn 300 gallons of diesel fuel per hour and produce 238kg of carbon dioxide per nautical mile, the equivalent of the CO2e an average British car emits in two months.
A six-and-a-half hour intercontinental flight on a private jet will have the same carbon footprint (13 mt CO2e) as the average US resident will have in a year (2020 data).
DiCaprio famously recalled one particular private jet junket when giving testimony in the US about his friend Jho Low who was accused of defrauding the Malaysian sovereign Wealth Fund 1MDB of billions and using those funds to support Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. The junket involved flying to Australia to celebrate New Year’s Eve – and then flying to Las Vegas to celebrate it a second time in one day. Jho Low had been the primary financier of DiCaprio’s ‘Wolf in Wall Street’ movie, investing $100m.
Now, in a stunning case of “do as I say, not as I do”, DiCaprio has thrown his weight and cash behind a new feature length kids animation highlighting the dangers of oil palm farming leading to deforestation.
“Ozi: Voice of the Forest” tells the story of an orphan orangutan who uses her influencer skills to save her forest and home from deforestation due to palm oil. Packed with a voice-cast of heavy hitters, the film claims to raise awareness around the issues our planet’s rainforests face due to deforestation, and how this affects the wildlife that live in them. It is aimed at children and claims to be entertainment “with a message” – but how accurate is that message? Not very, it turns out.
Firstly it conveniently ignores the progress that has been made by the palm oil industry to cut deforestation and work with environmental groups, communities and governments to ensure that the crop is sustainable and that consumers have access to ethically produced value-for-money, efficient vegetable oils.
Secondly, it ignores the fact that if they want to tackle deforestation they need to look far closer to home where soy and beef farmers are not only doing more damage to the earth’s forests but are also doing less to mitigate this harm than the palm industry.
Unlike DiCaprio and his fellow celebs, the palm industry can show what it’s doing to reduce its carbon footprint.
According to Forest 500 analysis by non-profit research group Global Canopy, palm oil supply chains were singled out as doing a better job than others in providing non-deforestation commitments. Among all the commodities that are linked to deforestation, commitments are more common in palm oil supply chains (72 per cent of companies have made a deforestation commitment) than other commodities including pulp and paper (49 per cent), soy (40 per cent), beef (30 per cent) and leather (28 per cent).
Palm oil is now the most widely used vegetable oil in the world largely because it is more efficient to produce than other vegetable oil. It supplies between 35 per cent and 40 per cent of the world’s vegetable oil demand on just under 6 per cent of the land used to produce all vegetable oils. To get the same amount from alternative oils like soybean, coconut, or sunflower oil you would need anything between 4-and-10 times more land, which would just expand the problem in to other parts of the world and threaten other habitats, species and communities.
Now deforestation in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea attributed to the development of oil palm plantations has fallen to its lowest level since 2017, according to satellite analysis published from risk analysis group Chain Reaction Research (CRR).
Driving consumers away from palm oil or campaigning for palm oil to be banned is simply transferring the problem and will result in more forests being cut down for other crops, more people staying poor, and more wildlife dying.
It would also have a devastating effect on communities. In Malaysia, palm oil has been a key contributor to reducing poverty from 50 per cent in the 1960s to just 5 per cent today, with smallholder production accounting for 40 per cent of total palm oil plantation areas.
This may not matter to people who flit around in private jets and mega yachts but if they had any genuine concerns it would.
It’s not just DiCaprio, other movie celebs and business people do it too. Bill Gates – who recently claimed to be ‘part of the climate solution’ and publicly campaigns for climate action – emitted 3,058 tonnes from his use of private jets. He took 392 flights on private jets last year – an average of more than one per day.
During the WEF meeting in Davos in January 2023, more than 1,040 private jets flew into airports servicing the luxurious Alpine resort. Some 53 per cent were for short-haul trips less than 750 km (466 miles), while 38 per cent were under 500 km (311 miles). The shortest flight was only 21km. Most flights came in from neighbouring countries Germany, France and Italy.
It is more than ironic that the rich and powerful flock to Davos in ultra-polluting, socially inequitable private jets to discuss climate and inequality behind closed doors, far away from the people they’re supposed to be trying to help.
Adjusting to climate change is obviously an important cause, but it is perhaps one that benefits more from the real-world action of those trying to make practical changes than it does from relevance-seeking celebrities who think nothing about personally emitting more carbon in an hour on their plane than the average Malaysian Oil Palm farmer emits in three months. The benefits of trade – local, regional and global – are what feeds the world, not pontificating from private jets and mega yachts.
If you appreciated this article please share and follow us on Twitter here – and like and comment on facebook here. Help support Global Britain publishing these articles by making a donation here.
Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European Parliaments and has worked on many development projects across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.
Photo of Vava II by Acroterion – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61268046