DiCaprio: Climate change is humanity’s ‘most urgent threat’

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio used his Oscars acceptance speech to sound an urgent alarm on the need to take action against climate change.

DiCaprio used his first Oscars win to tie the film in which he starred, The Revenant, to global warming.

“Making ‘The Revenant’ was about man’s relationship to the natural world. A world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow,” DiCaprio said at the Los Angeles event after accepting his best actor Oscar.

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

He called for the audience to support world leaders fighting climate change, and asked viewers to “not take this planet for granted.”

Backstage, DiCaprio told journalists that “this is the most existential crisis our civilization has ever known,” and the climate is “a ticking clock,” according to the Guardian.

DiCaprio has long been an outspoken activist on climate change, and in 2014, the United Nations named him an honorary special representative on climate.

He’s active with leading environmental groups like the World Wildlife Fund, and received an award from the World Economic Forum earlier this year for his activism.