EnvironmentLeonardo DiCaprionational geographicBefore the Flood

If Leonardo DiCaprio's Climate Doc Doesn't Make You Care About The Planet, Nothing Will

"Before The Flood" will be released for free because the filmmakers warn it's urgent that we all see it.
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Senior Reporter, HuffPost

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You can watch the entire documentary for free, until Nov. 6, above.

Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t terribly optimistic throughout most of his new project, the climate change documentary “Before The Flood.”

“I just want to know how far we’ve gone,” the actor says in the film. “How much damage we’ve done. And if there’s anything we can do to stop it.”

He travels to some of the regions where climate change has hit hardest: Greenland’s melting ice, the rising seas consuming Kiribati and the world’s dying coral reefs.

DiCaprio paints a dire picture: The world is burning, liquifying and warming faster than anyone expected, and far more quickly than anything humanity can adapt to.

The doc is the culmination of a three-year undertaking for DiCaprio and director Fisher Stevens. It will be released on Sunday.

The film will stream everywhere for free for a week following its release because of the urgent subject matter, National Geographic announced Monday. DiCaprio said he hoped the move would “make sure as many people as possible see this film.” 

It is perhaps one of the most hyped climate documentaries since former Vice President Al Gore’s groundbreaking “An Inconvenient Truth.” The film features appearances from President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, inventor and businessman Elon Musk and Pope Francis, along with many of the the world’s leading climate researchers.

This time, however, the science is far more real.

DiCaprio visits a melting Greenland, so affected by the warming planet that it, in turn, has begun to accelerate the phenomenon through a bellwether-esque feedback loop. Vast reserves of disappearing ice have pushed seas higher, forcing some low-lying island nations to seek refuge elsewhere. Meanwhile, massive rainforests in the Amazon and throughout Indonesia have been leveled for crop and cattle production, pumping huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

“I feel like I’m in some weird, surreal movie.”

- Leonardo DiCaprio

“We’re pushing this system really hard,” marine ecologist Jeremy Jackson says at one point. A seemingly endless stretch of dead coral reef surrounds him.

“I feel like I’m in some weird, surreal movie,” DiCaprio laments later in the film. “I honestly look around and I think, when I have children, everything that we now take for granted, our planet and all its biodiversity and beauty, everything in the future is going to be different.”

But despite his skepticism, all is not lost, according to those most in tune with these wide-ranging effects.

Astronaut Piers Sellers, now a leading climate scientist for NASA, notes that “there are ways out” of our current predicament that could, eventually, halt global warming.

“Rather than being, ‘oh my god, this is helpless,’ say, ‘ok, this is the problem, let’s be realistic and let’s find a way out of it,’” Sellers tells DiCaprio. “And there are ways out of it. If we stopped burning fossil fuels right now, the planet would still keep warming for a little while before cooling off again.”

A high task, but one some countries have already begun to plan for.

“Before the Flood” airs on the National Geographic Channel on Oct. 30 at 9 p.m. eastern. The network will have a free stream of the film up from that date through to Nov. 6 on its website, Facebook, Twitter and across streaming services.

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Before You Go

Climate change seen from around the world
(01 of05)
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A boy whose house was destroyed by the cyclone watches an approaching storm, some 50 kilometres southwest of the township of Kunyangon. Further storms would complicate relief efforts and leave children increasingly vulnerable to disease. In May 2008 in Myanmar, an estimated 1.5 million people are struggling to survive under increasingly desperate conditions in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, which hit the southwestern coast on 3 May, killed some 100,000 people, and displaced 1 million across five states. Up to 5,000 square kilometres of the densely populated Irrawaddy Delta, which bore the brunt of the storm, remain underwater. (credit:Unicef)
(02 of05)
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In 2003 in Djibouti, a girl collects water from the bottom of a well in a rural area in Padjourah District. Drought has depleted much of the water supply. (credit:Unicef)
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On Sept. 11, 2011, a man carries his daughter across an expanse of flood water in the city of Digri, in Sindh Province. By Sept. 26 in Pakistan, over 5.4 million people, including 2.7 million children, had been affected by monsoon rains and flooding, and this number was expected to rise. In Sindh Province, 824,000 people have been displaced and at least 248 killed. Many government schools have been turned into temporary shelters, and countless water sources have been contaminated. More than 1.8 million people are living in makeshift camps without proper sanitation or access to safe drinking water. Over 70 per cent of standing crops and nearly 14,000 livestock have been destroyed in affected areas, where 80 per cent of the population relies on agriculture for food and income. Affected communities are also threatened by measles, acute watery diarrhoea, hepatitis and other communicable diseases. The crisis comes one year after the country�s 2010 monsoon-related flooding disaster, which covered up to one fifth of the country in flood water and affected more than 18 million people, half of them children. Many families are still recovering from the earlier emergency, which aggravated levels of chronic malnutrition and adversely affected primary school attendance, sanitation access and other child protection issues. In response to this latest crisis, UNICEF is working with Government authorities and United Nations agencies and partners to provide relief. Thus far, UNICEF-supported programmes have immunized over 153,000 children and 14,000 women; provided nutritional screenings and treatments benefiting over 2,000 children; provided daily safe drinking water to 106,700 people; and constructed 400 latrines benefiting 35,000 people. Still, additional nutrition support and safe water and sanitation services are urgently needed. A joint United Nations Rapid Response Plan seeks US$356.7 million to address the needs of affected populations over the next six months. (credit:Unicef)
(04 of05)
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A girl carries her baby sibling through a haze of dust in Sidi Village, in Kanem Region. She is taking him to be screened for malnutrition at a mobile outpatient centre for children, operated by one nurse and four nutrition workers. The programme is new to the area. Several months ago, most children suffering from severe malnutrition had to be transported to health centres in the town of Mundo, 12 kilometres away, or in the city of Mao, some 35 kilometres away. In April 2010 in Chad, droughts have devastated local agriculture, causing chronic food shortages and leaving 2 million people in urgent need of food aid. Due to poor rainfall and low agricultural yields, malnutrition rates have hovered above emergency thresholds for a decade. But the 2009 harvest was especially poor, with the production of staple crops declining by 20 percent to 30 percent. Food stocks have since dwindled, and around 30 percent of cattle in the region have died from lack of vegetation. (credit:Unicef)
(05 of05)
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A boy carries supplies through waist-high floodwater in Pasig City in Manila, the capital. On Sept. 30, 2009, in the Philippines, over half a million people are displaced by flooding caused by Tropical Storm Ketsana, which struck on Sept. 26. The storm dumped over a month's worth of rain on the island of Luzon in only 12 hours. The flooding has affected some 1.8 million people, and the death toll has climbed to 246. (credit:Unicef)
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