Leonardo DiCaprio: 'Climate change deniers shouldn't hold office'

Leonardo DiCaprio has said that those who don’t believe in the threat of climate change have no place holding public office.

The thinly-veiled slight aimed at presidential nominee Donald Trump, who believes climate change is a hoax, was made in a speech made prior to a screening of his new documentary ‘Before The Flood’ at the White House yesterday.

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“If you don’t believe in climate change, you don’t believe in facts, and science, and empirical truths,” DiCaprio said.

“And, in my humble opinion, [you] should not be allowed to hold public office.”

In a tweet often brought up by Trump’s opponents, the Republican nominee said: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

Despite the wide circulation of the tweet, Trump denied that he’d made the claim during the first presidential debate last week.

“I did not. I did not. I do not say that,” he said. He’s also previously claimed that it was ‘a joke’.

The movie, made for the Discovery Channel, is directed by Fisher Stevens, and also produced by Martin Scorsese.

At the White House screening, which was attended by President Obama, the outgoing premier explained that he found some common ground with sportsmen and hunters on the subject of the conserving the environment, despite their likely disagreements on gun rights.

“I mean, they might not want to get mauled by a grizzly bear,” he said, referring to the harrowing scene in DiCaprio film, ‘The Revenant’.

“That looked, ah, a little severe.”

Image credits: RatPac/Reuters/AFP