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Jason Momoa Shames Humanity And Calls It A Disease At The UN Climate Summit, Now Some Say He Went Too Far
Jason Momoa addressed the United Nations in a way that’s very reminiscent of the powerful Greta Thunberg speech. Momoa, who spoke at the Small Islands Event on September 27, said that the world leaders aren’t doing enough to fight off climate change. However, the Hawaii-born Aquaman actor didn’t blame just them; he made it clear that humanity as a whole is “a disease that is infecting our planet.”
RELATED:
Watch Jason Momoa give his powerful speech at the United Nations in the video below
Image credits: United Nations
Image credits: United Nations
The 40-year-old actor was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, but raised by his mother in Iowa. His unique past gave Momoa “a foothold in two worlds,” and enabled him “to see how a problem for one will soon become a problem for all.” The speech emphasized the damaging effects humanity exerts on the oceans the most. Momoa highlighted that the garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean has grown larger than France, adding that we’ve developed a “devastating crisis of plastic pollution.”
Image credits: United Nations
Image credits: United Nations
Image credits: United Nations
Image credits: United Nations
Image credits: United Nations
Image credits: United Nations
Image credits: United Nations
While Momoa and Thunberg’s messages were in sync, Jason’s tone was more a parental one. “We can no longer afford the luxury of half-assing [our movement toward a sustainable way of life], ” Momoa said, “as we willingly force ourselves beyond the threshold of no return.”
Later, the actor had this to say about his experience at the U.N.
Image credits: prideofgypsies
Image credits: prideofgypsies
Many applauded his words
Image credits: KevzPolitics
Image credits: UNDESA
Image credits: FijiPM
Image credits: SustDev
Image credits: MaxChesnes
Others, however, expressed a different opinion
So the discussion continued
What do you think ?
Wil Vanderheijden 5 years ago
It's just unbelievable how many people still don't seem to get the message that it's not the environment that is at stake, but it's the future of us and our children that's in grave danger. Where will you be when you have earned $3 billion dollars but you can't buy food or clean water and there's no clean air to breathe?
Clinton Yew 5 years ago
Well if you consider the way how we gain benefit from earth resources and harming the earth, we human are indeed the parasitic disease.
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
No we're not. We're people who were forced to become consumers for a system in which we have no choice but to play their game. I'm sick of major powers shirking their responsibility and making it the problem of the poorest . Maybe they shouldn't ignore, nay sanction, corruption. If they really wanted to make a difference, and this is just very small example, they ought to maintain sustainable practices in their industry which may or may not cost them more but will decrease their bottom line, but we're kidding ourselves if we think they're going to do that. That's not to say there isn't "good" companies. look at Interface flooring, absolute champs when it comes to the environment and employee treatment
Load More Replies...
Jennifer Havill 5 years ago
Here's a thought: instead of perpetrating fear mongering, throw your money behind projects like the two blokes from Australia who developed an ocean cleaning device that is doing this very thing right now. Support Sea Shepherds! Encourage your fan base to do the same, clean up our beaches, help other countries legislate against ocean dumping!
Bill 5 years ago
He gripes about plastic but he has how many action figures in his likeness that he profits from
Alice Laughs 5 years ago
Rhys, don't call people f*****g morons. Also, some of us are doing something about it. But the odds are against the number of all the kids being born in the world who will "do something about it" versus all the kids being born who won't. Population actually is an issue.
Load More Replies...
ivan bolitekurac 5 years ago
I am sick of hollywood's powerful speeches.99% of them waste more resources than 99% of humans on earth.They hate walls,but live around big walls inside gated communities.They fight for diversity but many of them live in white neighborhoods with low criminal rates.They hate guns but are protected by them.Stop the hypocrisy,live by example...
Derek Honeyman 5 years ago
Nothing like a sweeping generalization of all actors. Whether you like the source or not, people listen. And if that starts change, then great.
Load More Replies...
Jim Lowe 5 years ago
So sad to see so many take the word of a tv reality star who doesn't know anything about science over 96% of scientist world wide.
Aria Clarke 5 years ago
I completely agree! However, whatever the source may be, at least people are starting to pay attention now. This should have happened ages ago. But it's happening now, and even if it's by an actor not a scientist, at least the knowledge is spreading. Also side note: Just because he's not a scientist, that doesn't mean he doesn't know about science. Global warming isn't something that only scientists know and can learn about.
Load More Replies...
Scott M 5 years ago
The Earth is an inanimate object. It doesn't care about us. Even if it did, we're nothing. If the Earth's timeline was as long as a roll of toilet paper, the entirety of human (H. sapiens) existence would amount to about the thickness of a sharp pencil line across the end of the very last sheet. This planet has seen dramatic climate changes and mass extinctions numerous times before. For how arrogant humans are about how our efforts to do anything for good or bad, all it'll take is another catastrophe from space to obliterate nearly all of these things we've done or hope to do. That said, we should do our best for ourselves and for the other living things here. Not because it matters in the grand scheme of things, because it doesn't. Whatever humans do matters to us and all the organisms we impact. If we're fortunate and don't ruin things for ourselves and other occupants of this planet too badly, we might even survive to see another pencil-line width of history on that timeline.
William Teach 5 years ago
The best part was how he took a long fossil fueled trip from LA to NYC to complain about fossil fueled climate change.
Bill 5 years ago
Public transport. AMTRACK is a thing, or he could have TELE-CONFERNCED
Load More Replies...
Juan Alcorta 5 years ago
I wonder why, just because he's an actor, he's given a place at the UN to speak. Does he have a PhD on environmental studies, just to say so? He might be right, or not. He doesn't have the studies to back his rather shallow speech.
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
Every Tom D**k Harry and Sally will listen to a buff celebrity, apparently. But not a nerdy scientist who has dedicated their life's work to research and not making millions pretending to be a comic book character, some sort of man-fish.
Load More Replies...
Keuthonymos 5 years ago
I love this, so, so much. He could have gone down to the beach with a spike/picker and actually attempted to "clean up the oceans" himself. Instead, he probably used a plane or some form of vehicle to get there, as well as the amount of silicon, plastic, metals, the fabric/plastic posters used to promote the event, ontop of the fossil fuels used to power the building makes this entire speech hypocritical. It's like vegans trying to say they're saving animals by not eating meat/dairy when in reality deforestation is killing more animals because they need their oh so precious soy.
Ed Souza 5 years ago
Don't get me wrong, I think Jason Mimosa is a cool guy. But please, you live a lavish life style and consume more then most of other "humans"... Now make me a Mimosa.
Alice Laughs 5 years ago
@Rhys You're advising people not to judge this guy on what he does or doesn't do when you're judging everyone else about what we do or don't do. You can also talk without screaming and name calling.
Load More Replies... 
Gwyn Plaine 5 years ago
Take that sh*t to India and China, we're doing quite enough!!!! Any more of your progressive, saccharine, sappy liberal bollocks and i'll burn tyres in my backyard! Unless the world is ending in the next 50 years I don't care as I'll be dead within this timeframe. Selfish YEP! Although in my defense ..... Bite me!!!!!!
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago (edited)
Sure, but India and China are serving the capitalistic interest of the west. Polluting factories in china re run by American countries. Children in India are having to sort through and be poisoned by e-waste from the west. Can't exactly blame them for trying to make a living in any way they can. They're trapped in our society's system. But yeah, I wouldn't want to leave a beautiful planet for the young people of today, they're s****y.
Load More Replies... Bill 5 years ago
The Obamas are taking up environmental causes from their private jet and another jet to fly their dog around
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
He flies most probably in a private jet to get to his role as a manfish thing. Celebrities with causes, ad nauseum
Load More Replies...
Herb Eaversmells 5 years ago
Look at all the comments calling out Jason. They are all,personal attacks and not discussing what he said.
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
I'll call out any celebrity telling me what to do while they bask in their wealth. They're as out of touch as politicians are, so f**k em
Load More Replies...
Andrea Careless 5 years ago
I'm very much on side with his message. I'm just wondering how much he walks the talk in his everyday -- well, celebrity -- life.
Nancy Cline 5 years ago
Wow a lot of those comments were stupid. So you are jealous of his career lol ok so why dont you get a better one. What he said is true. In my house we recycle what we can. Use reusable containers to take with us for cold or hot drinks. All p Kim cess we go we go together. So we make a day out of everything we have to do. If something come up we need we walk. Not hard to help out a little. Reusable bags for shopping, I mean come on people think.
Panda Panda 5 years ago
Telling the truth is not going too far. Overpopulation of the earth by humans is the primary problem for this planet's species.
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
IT can take more people, Panda dear, Not pollution. With proper infrastructure comes waste management too.
Load More Replies... 
steven 5 years ago
something I read quite a while ago. Fiction then, fact now ? “There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself. Man was his own grimmest joke on himself.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Angie Jolie 5 years ago
I love how people focused on how he said it, rather than the actual truth behind those words. This is the scary thing though, once something becomes big and being brought up widely, people will start making fun of it. Just like how people made fun of feminism. The problems EXIST! Some people might not be addressing those problems the right way, like extreme environmentalists or feminists, but those f*****g problems DO EXIST! Do you really think it's the speech that matters? NO! It's the f*****g ACTION that matters! Oh god, it's so so sad to see people writing about "how sick they are with the fake celebrities" etc, excuse me, if they're faking it, at least they're faking it for a good purpose, unlike you, the only thing you know to do is sit and complain or dig out some tiny words within what they said to diss the whole message.
Ana M 5 years ago
And now that Jason Momoa is in the UN people will talk like they talk about Greta Thunberg. But these people, if Greta was from an island, they would talk about the poor girl. So some people will talk dirt, no matter who, what or when.
Diane Aguilar 2 years ago
The difference between Jason Momoa and Greta Thunberg is that Jason Momoa is a pampered wealthy Hollywood celebrity who uses tons of fossil fuel from flying around in his private jet, whereas Greta Thunberg was an ordinary teenaged girl who actually was trying her best to enact positive environmental change on her own as an activist who walked the walk, not just talked the talk. I actually want to sit up and listen to the Greta Thunbergs of the world.
Load More Replies...
Monika Soffronow 5 years ago
BORED PANDA listen up: can you please, please, please introduce a new category named "CLIMATE" ?
Beans 5 years ago (edited)
I'm not trying to be mean but, how do you think plastics end up in the ocean? It's not people throwing c**p in rivers en mass-- its often landfil from failed recycling. Did you know most curb-side recycling programs require very little of the materials to be recycled? Did you know the US burns most of it? Guess where the rest ends up? Either in landfill or the ocean. Its not going to be fixed with a ban on straws and plastic unless the factories stop freaking making them. Recycling actually ADDS to carbon emissions-- recycling plastic pollutes the planet more than making new plastic-- and most of it cannot be recycled at all. Same with things like paper with food waste. It takes governments to stop corporations from being able to go to developing nations, mass producing cheap b******t, pumping out the emissions from that, and then selling it back to us. Emissions are the enemy right now. If plastic weren't being made it wouldn't be a problem. (cont..)
Load More Replies...
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
We're just as organic and natural to the earth as any other creature. The cancer is corporations and governments that sanction pollution for profit. In the US a corporation can be considered a person with the same rights. As human beings, we've modified the Earth for our needs, by turning natural resources into "unnatural" ones. Waste management, poor infrastructure and poor wealth/power distribution is our mistake, not the fact we exist.
Load More Replies...
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
They can have their opinion when they're giving an interview for ET, not be given an international platform in which they are made an authority. Celeb status does not make you a smarter person, and they're even more out of touch than the politicians whose job it is to make our decisions for us. In an ideal world, the politician would be informed and uncorruptable, but this isn't an ideal world.
Load More Replies...
Gisele 5 years ago
awwwwwwww.........a few hundred more downvotes and you you'll have to make up another account
Load More Replies...
Wil Vanderheijden 5 years ago
It's just unbelievable how many people still don't seem to get the message that it's not the environment that is at stake, but it's the future of us and our children that's in grave danger. Where will you be when you have earned $3 billion dollars but you can't buy food or clean water and there's no clean air to breathe?
Clinton Yew 5 years ago
Well if you consider the way how we gain benefit from earth resources and harming the earth, we human are indeed the parasitic disease.
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
No we're not. We're people who were forced to become consumers for a system in which we have no choice but to play their game. I'm sick of major powers shirking their responsibility and making it the problem of the poorest . Maybe they shouldn't ignore, nay sanction, corruption. If they really wanted to make a difference, and this is just very small example, they ought to maintain sustainable practices in their industry which may or may not cost them more but will decrease their bottom line, but we're kidding ourselves if we think they're going to do that. That's not to say there isn't "good" companies. look at Interface flooring, absolute champs when it comes to the environment and employee treatment
Load More Replies... Jennifer Havill 5 years ago
Here's a thought: instead of perpetrating fear mongering, throw your money behind projects like the two blokes from Australia who developed an ocean cleaning device that is doing this very thing right now. Support Sea Shepherds! Encourage your fan base to do the same, clean up our beaches, help other countries legislate against ocean dumping!
Bill 5 years ago
He gripes about plastic but he has how many action figures in his likeness that he profits from
Alice Laughs 5 years ago
Rhys, don't call people f*****g morons. Also, some of us are doing something about it. But the odds are against the number of all the kids being born in the world who will "do something about it" versus all the kids being born who won't. Population actually is an issue.
Load More Replies... ivan bolitekurac 5 years ago
I am sick of hollywood's powerful speeches.99% of them waste more resources than 99% of humans on earth.They hate walls,but live around big walls inside gated communities.They fight for diversity but many of them live in white neighborhoods with low criminal rates.They hate guns but are protected by them.Stop the hypocrisy,live by example...
Derek Honeyman 5 years ago
Nothing like a sweeping generalization of all actors. Whether you like the source or not, people listen. And if that starts change, then great.
Load More Replies... Jim Lowe 5 years ago
So sad to see so many take the word of a tv reality star who doesn't know anything about science over 96% of scientist world wide.
Aria Clarke 5 years ago
I completely agree! However, whatever the source may be, at least people are starting to pay attention now. This should have happened ages ago. But it's happening now, and even if it's by an actor not a scientist, at least the knowledge is spreading. Also side note: Just because he's not a scientist, that doesn't mean he doesn't know about science. Global warming isn't something that only scientists know and can learn about.
Load More Replies... Scott M 5 years ago
The Earth is an inanimate object. It doesn't care about us. Even if it did, we're nothing. If the Earth's timeline was as long as a roll of toilet paper, the entirety of human (H. sapiens) existence would amount to about the thickness of a sharp pencil line across the end of the very last sheet. This planet has seen dramatic climate changes and mass extinctions numerous times before. For how arrogant humans are about how our efforts to do anything for good or bad, all it'll take is another catastrophe from space to obliterate nearly all of these things we've done or hope to do. That said, we should do our best for ourselves and for the other living things here. Not because it matters in the grand scheme of things, because it doesn't. Whatever humans do matters to us and all the organisms we impact. If we're fortunate and don't ruin things for ourselves and other occupants of this planet too badly, we might even survive to see another pencil-line width of history on that timeline.
William Teach 5 years ago
The best part was how he took a long fossil fueled trip from LA to NYC to complain about fossil fueled climate change.
Bill 5 years ago
Public transport. AMTRACK is a thing, or he could have TELE-CONFERNCED
Load More Replies... Juan Alcorta 5 years ago
I wonder why, just because he's an actor, he's given a place at the UN to speak. Does he have a PhD on environmental studies, just to say so? He might be right, or not. He doesn't have the studies to back his rather shallow speech.
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
Every Tom D**k Harry and Sally will listen to a buff celebrity, apparently. But not a nerdy scientist who has dedicated their life's work to research and not making millions pretending to be a comic book character, some sort of man-fish.
Load More Replies... Keuthonymos 5 years ago
I love this, so, so much. He could have gone down to the beach with a spike/picker and actually attempted to "clean up the oceans" himself. Instead, he probably used a plane or some form of vehicle to get there, as well as the amount of silicon, plastic, metals, the fabric/plastic posters used to promote the event, ontop of the fossil fuels used to power the building makes this entire speech hypocritical. It's like vegans trying to say they're saving animals by not eating meat/dairy when in reality deforestation is killing more animals because they need their oh so precious soy.
Ed Souza 5 years ago
Don't get me wrong, I think Jason Mimosa is a cool guy. But please, you live a lavish life style and consume more then most of other "humans"... Now make me a Mimosa.
Alice Laughs 5 years ago
@Rhys You're advising people not to judge this guy on what he does or doesn't do when you're judging everyone else about what we do or don't do. You can also talk without screaming and name calling.
Load More Replies... Gwyn Plaine 5 years ago
Take that sh*t to India and China, we're doing quite enough!!!! Any more of your progressive, saccharine, sappy liberal bollocks and i'll burn tyres in my backyard! Unless the world is ending in the next 50 years I don't care as I'll be dead within this timeframe. Selfish YEP! Although in my defense ..... Bite me!!!!!!
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago (edited)
Sure, but India and China are serving the capitalistic interest of the west. Polluting factories in china re run by American countries. Children in India are having to sort through and be poisoned by e-waste from the west. Can't exactly blame them for trying to make a living in any way they can. They're trapped in our society's system. But yeah, I wouldn't want to leave a beautiful planet for the young people of today, they're s****y.
Load More Replies... Bill 5 years ago
The Obamas are taking up environmental causes from their private jet and another jet to fly their dog around
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
He flies most probably in a private jet to get to his role as a manfish thing. Celebrities with causes, ad nauseum
Load More Replies... Herb Eaversmells 5 years ago
Look at all the comments calling out Jason. They are all,personal attacks and not discussing what he said.
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
I'll call out any celebrity telling me what to do while they bask in their wealth. They're as out of touch as politicians are, so f**k em
Load More Replies... Andrea Careless 5 years ago
I'm very much on side with his message. I'm just wondering how much he walks the talk in his everyday -- well, celebrity -- life.
Nancy Cline 5 years ago
Wow a lot of those comments were stupid. So you are jealous of his career lol ok so why dont you get a better one. What he said is true. In my house we recycle what we can. Use reusable containers to take with us for cold or hot drinks. All p Kim cess we go we go together. So we make a day out of everything we have to do. If something come up we need we walk. Not hard to help out a little. Reusable bags for shopping, I mean come on people think.
Panda Panda 5 years ago
Telling the truth is not going too far. Overpopulation of the earth by humans is the primary problem for this planet's species.
Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
IT can take more people, Panda dear, Not pollution. With proper infrastructure comes waste management too.
Load More Replies... steven 5 years ago
something I read quite a while ago. Fiction then, fact now ? “There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself. Man was his own grimmest joke on himself.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Angie Jolie 5 years ago
I love how people focused on how he said it, rather than the actual truth behind those words. This is the scary thing though, once something becomes big and being brought up widely, people will start making fun of it. Just like how people made fun of feminism. The problems EXIST! Some people might not be addressing those problems the right way, like extreme environmentalists or feminists, but those f*****g problems DO EXIST! Do you really think it's the speech that matters? NO! It's the f*****g ACTION that matters! Oh god, it's so so sad to see people writing about "how sick they are with the fake celebrities" etc, excuse me, if they're faking it, at least they're faking it for a good purpose, unlike you, the only thing you know to do is sit and complain or dig out some tiny words within what they said to diss the whole message.
Ana M 5 years ago
And now that Jason Momoa is in the UN people will talk like they talk about Greta Thunberg. But these people, if Greta was from an island, they would talk about the poor girl. So some people will talk dirt, no matter who, what or when.
Diane Aguilar 2 years ago
The difference between Jason Momoa and Greta Thunberg is that Jason Momoa is a pampered wealthy Hollywood celebrity who uses tons of fossil fuel from flying around in his private jet, whereas Greta Thunberg was an ordinary teenaged girl who actually was trying her best to enact positive environmental change on her own as an activist who walked the walk, not just talked the talk. I actually want to sit up and listen to the Greta Thunbergs of the world.
Load More Replies... Monika Soffronow 5 years ago
BORED PANDA listen up: can you please, please, please introduce a new category named "CLIMATE" ?
Beans 5 years ago (edited)
I'm not trying to be mean but, how do you think plastics end up in the ocean? It's not people throwing c**p in rivers en mass-- its often landfil from failed recycling. Did you know most curb-side recycling programs require very little of the materials to be recycled? Did you know the US burns most of it? Guess where the rest ends up? Either in landfill or the ocean. Its not going to be fixed with a ban on straws and plastic unless the factories stop freaking making them. Recycling actually ADDS to carbon emissions-- recycling plastic pollutes the planet more than making new plastic-- and most of it cannot be recycled at all. Same with things like paper with food waste. It takes governments to stop corporations from being able to go to developing nations, mass producing cheap b******t, pumping out the emissions from that, and then selling it back to us. Emissions are the enemy right now. If plastic weren't being made it wouldn't be a problem. (cont..)
Load More Replies... Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
We're just as organic and natural to the earth as any other creature. The cancer is corporations and governments that sanction pollution for profit. In the US a corporation can be considered a person with the same rights. As human beings, we've modified the Earth for our needs, by turning natural resources into "unnatural" ones. Waste management, poor infrastructure and poor wealth/power distribution is our mistake, not the fact we exist.
Load More Replies... Valerie Lessard 5 years ago
They can have their opinion when they're giving an interview for ET, not be given an international platform in which they are made an authority. Celeb status does not make you a smarter person, and they're even more out of touch than the politicians whose job it is to make our decisions for us. In an ideal world, the politician would be informed and uncorruptable, but this isn't an ideal world.
Load More Replies... Gisele 5 years ago
awwwwwwww.........a few hundred more downvotes and you you'll have to make up another account
Load More Replies... 
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