Leonardo DiCaprio, the United Nations’ newly appointed Messenger of Peace, addressed world leaders at Tuesday morning’s UN Climate Summit, urging them to fully address climate change, “the greatest challenge of our existence on the planet.”
DiCaprio touched on his history as an actor to differentiate from fiction and fact.
“I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems. I believe that mankind has looked at climate change in that same way,” he said. “As if pretending that climate change wasn’t real would somehow make it go away, but I think we all know better than that now . . . None of this is rhetoric, and none of it is hysteria. It is fact.”
DiCaprio also joined some 400,000 people in New York City in a Sunday march meant to raise climate change awareness.
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington
- Meet the 2025 Women of the Year
- The Harsh Truth About Disability Inclusion
- Why Do More Young Adults Have Cancer?
- Colman Domingo Leads With Radical Love
- How to Get Better at Doing Things Alone
- Cecily Strong on Goober the Clown
- Column: The Rise of America’s Broligarchy
Contact us at letters@time.com