Topic > Before the flood: a reflection by Leonardo Dicaprio

IndexBefore the flood: summary (essay)ReflectionConclusionWorks citedBefore the flood: summary (essay)Immediately after the event, the actor and neo-environmentalist began his journey around to the world to deepen his knowledge of the global concern. During his expedition, he came face to face with the destruction and devastation that climate change has already caused, interviewing people who are experts in the field and who face these issues every day. During his travels he learned a great deal of new information that he found frightening. Before the Flood captures DiCaprio's fear of what will happen for the future of the world and leaves viewers with the same feeling. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Reflection Personally, I found many aspects of this film absolutely shocking, and not in a good way. At the beginning of the film government officials are shown vehemently denying that climate change is a real problem affecting our society today. Many of these strong influences may have been diverted from the known truth when oil companies, which play a major role in causing climate change, paid them millions of dollars to speak on their behalf (Before the Flood). I found this absolutely disgusting because the people who have the power to disastrously change the fate of our environment will not make the change, simply because those causing the problem are paying them to keep their mouths shut. I'm sure I'm not the only one who believes that money isn't as important as the future of our world, but clearly these people's beliefs have been corrupted. The fact that these things happen in government has no longer made me believe that we, the citizens of the United States, have elected the right people to such powerful positions in our country. Another part of the movie that I found terrible was the fact that Greenland itself is literally slowly melting and could be completely destroyed for future generations. Believe it or not, the damage caused by the melting of the polar ice caps will have an even greater effect than simply the country's absence. According to NASA's Pat Brennan, “The result [of this] may be…an expected acceleration of global sea levels, long predicted by computer models of Earth's climate” (Brennan, 2017, 3). Because of the large mass of the ice sheets, so much water will be released when they melt that sea levels are expected to rise substantially. To me, the fact that the country has already started to melt is enough to demonstrate the harsh reality of climate change, but evidently many government officials don't feel the same way. One final aspect of the film that I found rather depressing was the fact that many companies insist on using palm oil in their products, simply because it is cheap to grow and harvest. Companies like Tyson, Pepsico and Kraft Heinz all consider palm oil a crop suited to their needs (Before the Flood). However, this crop requires a significant amount of land, which leads to deforestation. In the particular area shown in the film and used for the growth of this crop, the forests were completely razed. Because trees trap carbon from our atmosphere, burning them releases carbon molecules into the air, which is harmful to wildlife and the environment. One of the forests in the photo appears to be home to many species of animals, such as elephants, orangutans, rhinos and tigers. This is it?.