Edward Norton (left), actor, filmmaker, and UN Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity, speaks with Melissa Fleming, Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, during the opening of the UNGA edition of the SDG Media Zone. [Photo credit: UN/Mark Garten] Edward Norton might seem shy. Standing in the SDG Media Zone at the UN Headquarters in New York, his gaze skitters away from the cameras. The blue denim shirt, the gray jeans, the wiry frame, and that raspy voice—all of it conspire to render him nearly invisible, as though he’s trying to fade into the background. But when he steps up to the podium, the shift is immediate. A switch flips. The fourth wall rises, and suddenly his quiet presence fills the room, illuminating the causes he champions. Enter biodiversity—a word that might dissolve into academic white noise for most, but for Norton, the Yale-educated, Golden Globe-winning actor who shot to fame in Fight Club , it’s a genuine passion. As the UN’s Goodwill Ambassador, he works with the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Environment Programme, advocating for endangered species like the African elephant. Why does he care so deeply? The reasons, he confesses, are “multi-dimensional.” “I don’t personally have any doubt that when people assess the era that we’re living in now, in the future, they’re going to say that our confrontation with the awareness, the blooming awareness of our climate crisis will be the defining challenge of our time,” Norton says. He believes that “how we respond to the awareness that we are altering the biosphere that supports us in ways that will cause catastrophic effects—even existential threats on some levels—will eclipse all our geopolitical conversations.” These conversations are “painful” and “difficult,” yet he likens them to “a family arguing at the dinner table about interpersonal dynamics while the house […]
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