Harrison Ford gets waxed to battle warming

NEW YORK - Harrison Ford pulled a Steve Carell for a public service announcement: He gets his chest waxed.

The 65-year-old star winces in apparent pain as a strip of hair is yanked from between his pecs for a PSA for Conservation International to raise awareness about the effect of deforestation on global warming.

The actor, who doesn't typically appear in such TV spots, sits on the board of directors of the Washington-based environmental organization.

Conservation International CEO Peter Seligmann said Ford was game to do the 30-second spot, and approved of the waxing concept.

"I didn't have to talk him into anything," Seligmann said at a news conference Tuesday in Manhattan. "I was there when he filmed it. It really hurt. There's nothing about the expression on his face that was fake."

The classic scene from 2005's "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" — in which Carell screams out "Kelly Clarkson!" during his chest hair removal — was intentionally hilarious.

'Lost There, Felt Here' campaign
Ford's message, however, is serious: "When rain forests get slashed and burned it releases tons of carbon into the air we breathe, it changes our climate, it hurts," he says. "Every bit of rain forest that gets ripped out over there, really hurts us over here."

Ford was unable to attend the news conference, where Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo helped launch the group's "Lost There, Felt Here" campaign

Instead, Ford was busy doing promotional work for his new film "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," which opens nationwide on Thursday.

"Paramount, which controls that, has him out racing around right now doing some more work," Seligmann said. "That's his business, and that's his lifeblood, and that's the moment we're in."

Conservation International says the burning and clearing of tropical forests emits at least 20 percent of global greenhouse gases, more than all of the world's cars, trucks and airplanes combined.

Guyana makes carbon pitch
The small South American nation of Guyana has retained up to 80 percent of its original Amazon rain forest cover. On Tuesday, Jagdeo offered to put that forest under international supervision in return for his country being paid for the carbon dioxide being stored in the trees and biomass.

"I am sorry Harrison Ford is not here, but I plan to take full advantage of your presence," he joked with reporters.

"While climate change policies may result in Europeans and North Americans having to pay more for an SUV, in poor countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America climate change is literally a matter of life and death," Jagdeo said.

"We must make it more valuable to leave our trees standing than to cut them down."

Additional campaign information is online at www.conservation.org/protectanacre

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