Celebrities are always on the lookout for the latest cause to latch onto while promoting their own public image. The latest celebrity cause is the Amazon wildfires, which they claim is sucking up 20% of the world’s oxygen. It would be an apocalyptic event of epic proportions – it it was true.
Celebrities such as Sean “Puffy” Combs, Madonna, Cristiano Ronaldo, Leonardo DiCaprio and French President Emmanuel Macron have all taken to social media to raise the alarm about the Amazon wildfires in South America.
“Our house is on fire. Literally. The Amazon, the lung of our planet which produces 20 percent of our oxygen is burning,” Macron tweeted.
And German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the “acute emergency” should belong on the world’s agenda.
Stars such as Madonna, Cristiano Ronaldo, Leonardo DiCaprio, rapper Jaden Smith, and race car driver Lewis Hamilton retweeted photos that they claim shows the entire Amazon rainforest basin consumed by raging fires.
None of them mentioned that wildfires occur in parts of the Amazon every year.
But a French newspaper did their research and discovered all of the photos and videos either misrepresent the actual wildfires or are totally misleading. Some of the photos were taken over a decade ago, and other photos aren’t of the Amazon at all.
For instance, the photo tweeted by Macron was taken 16 years ago. The photographer, Loren McIntyre, died in 2003.
Sean Combs gathered his youngest children (and a friend’s son) around him for a PSA video he recorded about the wildfires.
“This is an emergency announcement. Did y’all know that the Amazon has been burning for weeks,” he said before showing old footage of a forest on fire somewhere.
Leonardo DiCaprio shared two wildfire images on Twitter – the same one tweeted by Macron – and another photo shot in the Peruvian city of Puerto Maldonado in 2016, according to France24.com. Peru is not currently on fire, though authorities there are “on alert” just in case.
Rapper Jaden Smith, son of superstars Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, tweeted a dramatic photo of a raging forest fire with columns of smoke and embers scorching the sky. The photo was actually snapped in 1989.
Lewis Hamilton also shared a photo of wildfires – taken by American photographer Loren McIntyre before he died in 2003.
