DHAKA: Leonardo DiCaprio met with President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday to discuss climate change adding to the mixed signals from the President-elect on the environment.
“We presented the President-elect and his advisors with a framework ... that details how to unleash a major economic revival across the United States that is centered on investments in sustainable infrastructure,” Terry Tamminen, CEO of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, said in a statement.
“Our conversation focused on how to create millions of secure, American jobs in the construction and operation of commercial and residential clean, renewable energy generation.”
DiCaprio’s meeting with Trump only added to the mixed messages coming out of Trump Tower, particularly on the issue of climate change, reports the CNN.
On the same day of his meeting with DiCaprio, Trump tapped Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt, a climate change denier, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
Pruitt is an opponent of many of the Obama EPA’s environmental regulations, and sued the agency over its regulations of power plants in his capacity as attorney general.
Coupled with Trump’s own history of climate change skepticism, environmentalists see dim prospects for action that scientists say is necessary to avert the most devastating consequences of climate change.
Trump has called climate change a “hoax” but in a recent interview allowed for the possibility that human activity may be contributing to global warming.
Trump held a separate meeting this week with another high-profile environmental activist, former Vice President Al Gore, who has also championed the fight against climate change in his career after politics.
DiCaprio has used his celebrity to champion environmental causes. He emphasized the threat of climate change in his 2016 Academy Awards acceptance speech – “Climate change is real, it is happening right now,” he said and produced a documentary on the subject, titled “Before the Flood,” which was released this year.
BDST: 0914 HRS, DEC 09, 2016
AP/BD
