The green carpet

I have always believed that celebrities are weapons of mass distraction, ingeniously put in place by big media moguls to pray on the stupidity of the masses in their voyuerisitc love of inanities in the lives of people who are essentially inconsequential.

But something recently has shaken this conviction somewhat.

It turns out that hollywood hearthrob Leonardo DiCaprio has been an environmentalist for the past ten years. That's right, even before he starred in his big hollywood hits. Who would have thought that that smug italian soft-featured face illumined by a deluge of paparazzi camera flashes had a brain ticking behind it? Not just a pretty face afterall!

Well, Mr DiCaprio has decided to fund and feature in a new film called the 11th hour that aims to ask the most profound questions about the environmental agenda of our age. (At the age of 25 Dicaprio had interviewed the then president Bill Clinton about climate change). The documentary film, which involves DiCaprio interviewing key environmental figures and experts is said to be a commercial suicide. I doubt it would be very popular, but the mere fact that it has DiCaprio in it will be sure to attract hordes and introduce them to something completely new. The only problem is that the commerical value of DiCaprio extends to the mainstream of people who know very little even about climate change and thus wont be too receptive to the philosophies of human ecology, the finer points of which this film delves into. However, I still believe it's a positive step and a great way to attract the masses. Celebrities showing genuine concern can only be a weapon weilding enormous power- power to win the people.

I leave you with a quote from former World Bank Economist, Herman Daly, which is featured in the film:

'The most basic thing to understand about our global economic system is that it's a subsystem. The larger system is the biosphere, and the subsystem is the economy. The problem, of course, is that out subsystem, the economy, is geared for growth; it's all set up to grow, to expand. Whereas the parent system doesn't grow; it remains the same size. So, as the economy grows, it displaces, it encroaches upon the biosphere, and this is the fundamental cost of economic growth. It's what you give up when you expand'.

Wow.