Before The Flood By Leonardo Dicaprio Analysis

The documentary film Before the Flood, directed by Fisher Stevens and starring academy award winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio, in short, is about climate change. It dives into deeper topics such as the effects of industrialism on our planet, what our future looks like and what we should be doing to reverse our actions. Leonardo DiCaprio, who besides being an actor is an environmental activist tries to convey the message that climate change is real and that it is destroying our planet. He reiterates during his travels around the world to various countries that now is the time to take action, before it’s too late. The critical message of Before the Flood is that many countries, especially the United States of America have been severely damaging …show more content…
Out of all the climate change supporters he encountered, I believe their research and predictions for the future to be correct. These men and women have dedicated their lives to studying the Earth, its climate and how the actions of humans have been detrimental to the environment, and I trust them. One person that Leo had the chance to meet was Professor Jason Box, a man who studies artic ice sheets in Greenland. Rising temperatures have been melting the ice in Greenland. Box tracks the ice levels with a hose, and showed Leo a pile of hose on the ice. "The hose went down 30 feet, but [the ice] has now melted out. Five years of melt. Hundreds of cubic kilometers of ice stored on land that has now gone into the sea,” explained Box. Another credible voice that Leo met was astronaut Dr. Piers Sellers. Sellers, who unlike most, has seen the Earth and its thin atmosphere from space. Sellers has observed the Earth and has access to maps that show the already decaying natural resources and the predictions for the future. After showing Leo the maps, Sellers said “the ice is melting, the Earth is warming, the sea level is rising—those are facts”. One more climate change validator, Johann Rockstrom, a professor of environmental science at Stockholm University mentioned how Earth’s …show more content…
I had already seen multiple documentaries on the environment and on climate change. I did not know, though, how influential Leonardo DiCaprio was and how passionate he was about the Earth. I enjoyed getting to hear from so many different professors, doctors and environmentalists. Each person Leonardo talked to had something new to say or show him, and I never felt like I was hearing the same thing over and over again. I disliked the lack of female representation. To my knowledge only 2 female scientists were addressed directly in this film and that’s very discouraging, because there are many women in this field. It had been a while since I’d studied climate change, and Before the Flood helped refresh my memory on the state of our planet. I am 100% convinced that climate change is real, and I was before watching this, too. I sourced Before the Flood from YouTube, and am very thankful to the uploader so that I did not have to pay to watch