02/20 Reaction to Documentary

My initial reaction to Leonardo DiCaprio's documentary was "wow that was heavy." I am writing today to go into more depth about my impressions. 

The first "wow!" moment was when Leonardo discussed how he first became interested in climate change. As a young boy, he was fascinated by extinct species—the Tasmanian tiger, dodo, quagga, and many more. Most notably, the passenger pigeon stood out to me as going from billions to extinct. Leonardo boldly noted that "now we do it knowingly." At first, I thought it to be peculiar that they allow Leonardo DiCaprio to be such a public figure when it comes to climate change, but as the film progressed, it made sense: he is well known, and that's what the world needs to wake up and listen. It was disheartening to hear that a solution used to be simply changing our lightbulbs; however, we are way past that point and must take greater action. 

Another impression I came away with is how politicized climate change is for no good reason. They said it best in the film, "the ocean is not Republican or Democrat, all it knows to do is rise." After hearing about the "sunny day flooding" in Florida it seemed outrageous that Florida's governor banned politicians talking about climate change and that Senator Rubio simply did not even believe in it. Politicians will listen to the public to stay in office, so it is up to the people to speak up about saving our environment. They are our "elected followers." 

Finally, I found Leonardo's closing speech to be extremely impactful. It is true that one day when we have our own kids, the things we take for granted will be different, if not gone. This documentary delivered the important notion that we must act now to save our planet in a heavy yet impactful way.