I did not miss the irony when I saw that Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio attended the People's Climate March.
Allegedly, these two feel climate change is caused by people and that we must downsize and stop our over-consumption, but they don't feel strongly enough to reflect that belief in their own lives. Both own gigantic McMansions, fly in private jets, travel with huge respective entourages, and own multiple homes instead of just one.
We can add to our list of environmental hypocrites Neil Young (and his vintage, gas-guzzler car collection) and Robert Redford (whose “ranch” is enormous and encompasses hundreds of acres while he says the rest of us should stop buying/developing open land).
If, as a collective, the climate marchers could convince Hollywood celebrities to lead by example and downsize to one- or two-bedroom apartments or modest homes, drive only electric cars, and eschew private jets in favor of commercial airlines, then half the problem here in the U.S. would be solved.
No one needs a 20,000-plus-square-foot house, and no one needs to fly on a private jet. These celebrities are choosing to live a life absolutely saturated with over-consumption while they tell the rest of us to conserve.
The hypocrisy is half the reason most of the U.S. doesn't register climate change in their top-ten concerns about the country. As soon as the rich and famous start taking their own advice to live more sustainably and they start to shame their peers to do the same, maybe their speeches about the “catastrophe” of climate change will hold a little truth.
Until then, all I see are hypocritical talking heads, trying to tell the rest of us how to live.