For a time, the Internet was agog over Leonardo DiCaprio’s claim that he’s getting a ticket to Mars – presumably as part of SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk’s plan to send a million people to the Red Planet over the next century.
Then the truth came out: The Oscar-winning star of “Titanic” and “The Revenant” was only joking. Which you could have figured out immediately by watching the video of Monday’s repartee with President Barack Obama and climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe.
Mars came up during Obama’s meet-up at the South by South Lawn festival, which preceded a showing of DiCaprio’s documentary on climate change, titled “Before the Flood.”
Hayhoe was saying how important the climate issue was for everyone on the planet.
“One of the most insidious myths I feel like we’ve bought into is that I have to be a certain type of person to care about climate change, and if I am not that person, then I don’t care about it because I care about these other things,” she said. “But the reality is that if we’re a human living on this planet – which most of us are, yup? As long as we haven’t signed up for the trip to Mars. I don’t want to know if anybody has – I think you’re crazy.”
“I did,” DiCaprio cracked.
“Oh, you did? Oh, I’m sorry, I take that back,” Hayhoe said with a laugh.
“No, no, I think he’ll acknowledge he’s crazy,” Obama joked. “He’s fine with it.”
The trio went on to discuss the values behind climate activism. “If we’re a human living on this planet, this is the only planet we have,” Hayhoe continued. “It’s our home.” (Check out the full exchange starting at about 1:15:30 in this YouTube video.
Hayhoe was clearly referring to the plan that Musk announced last week in Mexico, which would involve sending settlers to Mars on giant rockets to turn humanity into a multiplanet species.
Not that SpaceX’s founder has anything against Earth, or against addressing climate change: In fact, he favors instituting a tax on carbon emissions to encourage cleaner technologies (like the solar-power systems installed by one of his favorite companies, SolarCity). Musk just wants to help create a cosmic insurance policy against climate catastrophes, asteroid strikes or other doomsday scenarios.
Although Musk estimates that the cost of a ticket (including an optional return trip) might eventually amount to somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000, he’s not taking reservations yet.
However, DiCaprio does have a different kind of date with outer space: He’s holding a reservation for a suborbital trip on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, which could be blasting off with paying passengers in the next year or two.
