Blatant Hypocrisy: Hollywood Actress Flies over 5,000 Miles To Tell Citizens To Protect Planet
Leon Neal / Getty ImagesBritish actress Emma Thompson joined environmental protests in London last week, but only after flying 5,400 miles in a carbon-emitting jet plane to get there from Los Angeles. (Leon Neal / Getty Images)
BY KARISTA BALDWIN PUBLISHED APRIL 22, 2019 AT 5:42AM
British actress Emma Thompson joined in environmentalist protests Friday in London after hopping off a 5,400-mile flight from Los Angeles.
MSN News reported that the British-born Thompson, 60, spoke strongly during the Extinction Rebellion protests this past week, calling out the “hypocrisy” of her government when it comes to climate change. She said that she has seen the “evidence for herself” of environmental problems and praised the younger generation for its activism.
“I really do care about my children and my grandchildren enough to want to be here today to stand next to the next generation, who are so inspiring, who so understand the problem,” Thompson said Friday in a Sky News interview.
“It’s as though we’ve just been going around — well, not me actually, I’ve been banging about it for years, and so have many, many people — but I really do feel like, I can’t even describe the level of hypocrisy of our government,” she continued.
"I can't describe the level of hypocrisy from our government."
Actress Emma Thompson says she's standing with the "next generation who want to fix the problem". #ExtinctionRebellion protests are taking place in London demanding action on climate change: po.st/iwuLbY
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According to the U.K. Independent, Thompson said she would have arrived at the demonstrations sooner had she not been away celebrating her birthday.
“I absolutely wanted to be arrested on my 60th birthday but I didn’t quite manage that. I’m so proud and thrilled to be part of Extinction Rebellion,” Thompson said.
Some of Thompson’s younger, “inspiring” Extinction Rebellion comrades spent their time protesting the climate-changing emissions of the Heathrow airport, where Thompson’s flight had arrived earlier. According to Sky News, the group of activists tried (but failed, thankfully for Thompson) to block traffic enough that flights would have to be canceled.
Are Thompson's actions hypocritical?
MSN reports that in addition to giving media interviews during the protests, Thompson addressed crowds from atop a pink boat in Oxford Circus, where she compared herself to a suffragette.
The actress also defended her air travel habit, saying that she plants “a lot of trees.”
When asked if she flew economy, Thompson disregarded the notion.
“I bloody don’t, no, I’m far too old for that,” she responded.
“One of the things which has happened consistently over the decades I’ve been protesting about this is that it’s always turned back on the individual — you’re the one who flies, you’re the one who’s using this, you’re the one who wants this,” Thompson said, according to MSN.
“The fact of the matter is, everyone has been asking for clean energy for decades — this demand has been made for decades and it has been ignored for decades.”
“If I could fly cleanly, I would,” she continued.
(AKA, “if I could change my lifestyle without changing my lifestyle, I would.”)
The actress continued on the anti-personal responsibility theme. She criticized the police for responding to complaints about the protests, which blocked traffic and hurt the business of surrounding stores.
As the protests continued to drain police resources, the head of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, pleaded with activists to move elsewhere to “protest lawfully.”
According to the Guardian, more than 1,500 officers were on duty at the protests on Saturday. Dick told Sky News that “lots of people have had miserable disruption to their lives” because of the demonstrations.
But when confronted with a question about wasting police resources, Thompson said the responsibility wasn’t on the protesters.
“That’s up to the police, that’s not our decision, we didn’t ask for police resources,” she said, according to MSN. “It’s not like we’re burning things down. The police turned up because they’ve been asked to turn up and that’s not our responsibility.”
Maybe, but using modern means of transportation like jet air travel to protest against the effects on the climate that the modern world is supposedly causing is a form of hypocrisy Thompson and her comrades definitely are responsible for.
But like the other celebrities who jet around the world to espouse their love for the climate — Leonardo Di Caprio, Al Gore and the Hollywood crowd — she’ll never admit it.
Yet she complains about the “hypocrisy” of the British government.
Evidently, the irony was lost on her.
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