Famous actors virtue-signalling about politics is an interesting and arguably counter-productive phenomenon. The speeches that are given during award ceremonies are not always innocuous, even if they are cringeworthy. For one thing, they run the risk of putting people off the political cause in question.
In the case of Leonardo DiCaprio, for instance, it would be simple to find his green virtue-signaling annoying given the fact that he leads a lifestyle that is characterised by frequent travel. It is well known that he has a soft spot for mega-yachts that consume a lot of diesel, and he once travelled thousands of miles on a private jet, which was ironically on his way to accept an award for environmental protection.
When celebrities get involved in political discourse, however, the most significant issue is that they have a tendency to make mistakes that are difficult to understand. They frequently get involved in matters that they have a limited understanding of.
As a result of their tremendous reach and lack of accountability, they are able to say whatever they want and be praised for it by their ideological fellow travellers. Especially when it comes to complex policy topics like the environment, this can lead to erroneous information and viewpoints that are not always accurate.
Policies on climate change are anything but easy. The situation involves a number of complexities and trade-offs. There are countless green measures that are not successful in slowing climate change, and many of these policies also make us poorer or cause negative side effects for the planet.
Discussions on the environment need to be conducted with a level head, but the Hollywood paradigm of virtue signalling does not lend itself to such discussions. Celebrities find it far more convenient to send their message out into the world, promoting simplistic solutions to complex problems, and then to close themselves off to legitimate criticisms and complexities. This is a lot more comfortable situation for them.
Factually speaking, they frequently get things wrong. The ultimate result is that they wind up stoking the fires of public ire when the straightforward solutions that we see on screen do not materialise in real life, or even stoking the flames of existential fear through storylines of disasters, such as Leonardo DiCaprio’s film Don’t Look Up.
After the uproar that surrounded the premiere of that film, Leonardo DiCaprio has now thrown his support behind a new film called Ozi: Voice of the Forest. He has not learnt his lesson from the incident.
The film totally butchers the facts and leaves out important context. It omits to mention that palm oil deforestation is consistently trending downwards. Global Forest Watch data tells us it has fallen 70% since 2014. More than 90% of the palm oil Europe imports now carries a sustainability certification. And as for orangutans, things are only looking up thanks to land regulation schemes in Malaysia keeping their habitats intact.
Even the world-renowned Orangutan Land Trust and Chester Zoo have said they are concerned that palm oil has been depicted as a villain in the film, that they do not agree there should be a blanket ban on palm oil and that the film sends the completely wrong message to families and children:
“The vast majority of conservation organisations and experts do not agree with a blanket boycott of palm oil, and we are concerned that children and families watching this film will be left with the impression that this is the right action to take. We believe that one of the most effective ways to tackle forest loss and help orangutans like Ozi is to support sustainable palm oil, instead of boycotting it altogether.”
The lesson, then, is to take political virtue-signalling from the rich and famous with a hefty pinch of salt. If they can get this so wrong, they can make the same mistake with oher issues, too.