Don’t choose extinction: dinosaur urges world leaders

In a UN first, a ferocious and talkative dinosaur burst into UN Headquarters in New York

with a special warning for any diplomats who still think climate action is for the birds

In a first, a ferocious and talkative dinosaur burst into the iconic General Assembly Hall at UN Headquarters in New York, to warn diplomats who think climate action is only for the birds.

“At least we had an asteroid,” the carnivorous critter warned, referring to the popular theory explaining dinosaurs’ extinction 70 million years ago. “What’s your excuse?”

This wasn’t a slice of real life, of course, rather the key computer-generated scene from a new short film launched on November 9 by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), as the centerpiece of the agency’s ‘Don’t Choose Extinction’ campaign.

The dinosaur told the audience of bewildered diplomats that “it’s time humans stopped making excuses and started making changes” to address the climate crisis.

Dinosaur addressing UN forum in New York, on climate change — This visitor made an appearance in the UN General Assembly, exhorting world leaders not to choose extinction and to save the human species “before it’s too late.”

It was the first-ever film to be made inside the General Assembly Hall using computer-generated imagery, known as CGI, and featured global celebrities voicing the dinosaur in numerous languages, including actors Eiza González (Spanish), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Danish), and Aïssa Maïga (French).

According to the UNDP research released as part of the campaign, the world spends $423 billion annually just to subsidize fossil fuels, enough to cover a COVID-19 vaccination for every person in the world or three times the annual amount needed to eradicate global extreme poverty.

“Think of all the other things you could do with that money. Around the world, people are living in poverty,” the dinosaur said.

“Don’t you think that helping them would make more sense than…paying for the demise of your entire species?”