Bringin’ in the star power. Leonardo DiCaprio met with President-elect Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump at the Trump Tower on Wednesday, December 7, to discuss ways that creating green jobs could help the nation’s economy.
According to a statement that Terry Tamminen, the head of the actor’s eponymous environmental foundation, released Wednesday, he and The Revenant star, 42, met with the Trumps for about 90 minutes, during which they laid out a “framework” for how the incoming cabinet can be more considerate of the environment.
“Today, we presented the president-elect and his advisers with a framework — which LDF (the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation) developed in consultation with leading voices in the fields of economics and environmentalism — that details how to unleash a major economic revival across the United States that is centered on investments in sustainable infrastructure,” Tamminen said in the statement.
“Our conversation focused on how to create millions of secure American jobs in the construction and operation of commercial and residential clean, renewable energy generation,” he added.
As part of their exchange, DiCaprio gifted the real estate mogul, 70, with a copy of his recent documentary, Before the Flood, which addresses the perils of climate change and its effect on the planet. (He had given Ivanka, 35, a copy during a prior meeting.) A source told the AP that the president-elect promised to watch it.
Trump has previously denied the reality of climate change, calling it a “concept” created “by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
On Wednesday, however, the president-elect seemed open to discussing global warming further. In Tamminen’s statement, the LDF CEO reported that “the president-elect expressed his desire for a follow-up meeting in January, and we look forward to continuing the conversation with the incoming administration as we work to stop the dangerous march of climate change while putting millions of people to work at the same time.”
That same day, however, Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt was appointed as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, a pick that confused many who recall that Pruitt has advocated vehemently against the EPA throughout his political career.
In a July report by the Sierra Club, it was determined that “if elected, Donald Trump would be the only world leader today to deny the science of climate change. In fact, a review of the data indicates that Trump might very well be the only world leader not calling for urgent climate action.”
