Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t big on walking his climate-change talk

Star preaches conservation to masses, yet his own sacrifices seem to be few

Leonardo DiCaprio is worried, very worried, about the state of the planet.

So the jet-hopping, yacht-loving, multiple-home-owning Hollywood megastar recently took a break from the money-grubbing world of Tinseltown to educate us plebes (you know, those of us who ride the LRT to work, recycle our cans and bottles, and turn down the thermostat at night) on the threat of climate change.

DiCaprio wants us to know that the situation is bad, and getting worse. Which is why he teamed up with the National Geographic Channel and director Fisher Stevens to make Before The Flood, a 95-minute documentary that chronicles the impact rising temperatures are having on our planet, from Greenland to Indonesia.

This involved a lot of flying to exotic locales, naturally, where DiCaprio speaks to climate scientists, religious leaders, activists and even fellow celebs like Oscarwinning director Alejandro Inarritu (The Revenant), Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk and U.S. President Barack Obama. All share his grave concern about the future of our warming world.

DiCaprio admits his own emissions easily outstrip those of us regular folks. But like so many eco celebrities — from Al Gore to Bono, James Cameron, David Suzuki, Tom Steyer and Neil Young — DiCaprio continues to enjoy the big life.

To offset his carbon footprint (and presumably to ease his conscience), DiCaprio reportedly works with a London-based firm called Future Forests to plant trees in Mexico.

That’s all very nice, and I’m sure DiCaprio is sincere when he makes grand speeches, as he did at last year’s Academy Awards, about the need to address climate change. But while preaching conservation to the masses, he seems disinclined to impose any real sacrifices on himself.

He talks the talk. That’s the easy part. But he won’t walk the walk. That’s the hard part.

Perhaps that’s why DiCaprio felt it was just fine to rent one of the world’s largest yachts — owned, ironically, by an oil baron from the Middle East — to attend the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

I suspect it’s no coincidence that Before The Flood had its September world premiere in Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival. Stevens, the film’s director, told the assembled fanboys and fangirls that he was “really horrified” by the scenes he witnessed in Alberta’s oilsands.

“Look, we all want work, we all need jobs — God knows,” he reportedly told a Toronto newspaper. “And it would be great if it was like: ‘Now, we take all of these people (from the oilsands) and we replant all of that forest.’ Wouldn’t that be amazing?” Gosh, it sure would. And it would be wonderful if we didn’t need fossil fuels, or petrochemical plants, or airports, or freeways, or the trucking industry, or railways, or ships, or pipelines, or synthetic clothing, or cosmetics, or food preservatives, or the hundreds of other petroleum-based products we use every day. But we do.

Environmental activists have done an incredibly effective job of demonizing the oil industry, and one particular energy source — the oilsands — in particular. And they have been astonishingly effective, with the help of their political soulmates, at delaying or blocking oil pipelines in Canada. (As for Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran? Not so much.)

But protesters are extremely selective in choosing their targets, while deliberately avoiding others. When, for example, was the last time you heard about a Greenpeace protest at a metro airport, an auto assembly plant, or at the opening of a new bridge or freeway? Never, I’ll bet.

That’s because the eco-activist crowd wants you to believe in a simple black-and-white world.

If only we stop the evil, planet-destroying production of oil, all will be well, and the world will quickly gravitate to renewable sources of energy, with little or no cost to consumers.

This is magical thinking, of course. The kind of thinking that’s popular in Hollywood, where dreamers dream big dreams, and little people like you and me don’t fit into the script.