Filming 'Revenant' Gave SAG Winner Leonardo DiCaprio 'Terrifying' First-Hand View on Climate Change

Canada and South America’s breathtaking backdrops in “The Revenant” gave its award-winning star, Leonardo DiCaprio, a “terrifying” up close and personal look at climate change.

Record-breaking temperatures linked to climate change are the new normal for residents forced to endure their changing environment, the actor learned while filming the movie in locations that included Mexico, Argentina, British Columbia and Alberta.

“We shot at high altitudes in Calgary, and weather conditions were unprecedented," DiCaprio, 41, said Saturday, speaking backstage at the SAG Awards in Los Angeles.

"The locals had told us they’d never had weather extremes like that since they’ve lived there,” he added. “And you realize that 2015 was the hottest year in recorded history, December was the hottest, you know, December in recorded history.”

DiCaprio nabbed his first best actor award for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s stark flick filmed over the course of nine months in 2014 and 2015. The cast and crew were often thwarted by temperatures that flexed “from hot to cold,” trekking to the southernmost Martial Mountains range to find snowy conditions.

"Our weather is dramatically changing,” DiCaprio said. “We had to go to southern tip of Argentina just to be able to find snow to complete the film.”

DiCaprio, who founded the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in 1998 to help biodiversity and threatened ecosystems, used his passion project to talk climate change with residents of the movie’s locales.

The Oscar nominee said he's working on a documentary on the subject that he hopes to finish "in the next few months."

"We are in the process of changing our climate for tens of thousands if not millions of years at this very moment, so this is a very significant turning point for me to witness it first-hand while doing this movie and simultaneously doing the documentary, and it’s absolutely, absolutely terrifying,” he said.

DiCaprio praised Pope Francis for his 2015 encyclical denouncing fossil fuel-based economies and called his meeting with the Holy See at the Vatican last week an honor.

“He’s been inspiring and revolutionary, to come out and be outspoken about the issue of climate change and endorse the scientific community," DiCaprio said.

During the private audience Thursday, the actor presented Pope Francis with a donation from his foundation and a book of 15-century Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch’s depicting DiCaprio’s perspective on the Earth’s environmental plight.

"We have 99% of the scientific community now saying climate change exists and it’s caused by mankind. Anyone who doesn’t believe in climate change doesn’t believe in science. So the fact that he has come out as the spiritual leader endorsing the scientific movement is unprecedented, and it was an incredible honor to meet him," he added.

SOURCE: nydailynews.com - http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/revenant-showed-leonardo-dicaprio-climate-change-effects-article-1.2515417

Follow us on #climatechangelb to engage with us.

Check the Lebanon Climate Change website: www.moe.gov.lb/climatechange

This segment is brought to you through a partnership between the UNDP Climate Change Team at the Ministry of Environment in Lebanon and the NAHARNET team. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any party/institution.

Photo: VINCE BUCCI/VINCE BUCCI/INVISION/AP