President Obama on Tuesday defended his decision to go to Paris for climate talks just weeks after the Islamic State killed 130 Parisians, and said climate change needs to be tackled immediately because it affects everything else in the world.
Many Republicans have said the Paris talks should have been turned into a conference to deal with terrorism, which they say is a more immediate threat. Obama acknowledged that criticism Tuesday from Paris.
“I know some have asked why the world would dedicate some of our focus right now to combating climate change, even as we work to protect our people and go after terrorist networks,” he said.
“The reason is because this one trend, climate change, affects all trends,” he explained.
“If we let the world keep warming as fast as it is, and sea levels rising as fast as they are, and weather patterns keep shifting in more unexpected ways, then before long we are going to have to commit more and more and more of our economic and military resources not to growing opportunity for our people, but to adapting to the various consequences of the changing planet,” he added.
“This is an economic and security imperative that we have to tackle now, and great nations can handle a lot at once,” Obama concluded.
Obama said his goal now is to take the commitments made by dozens of countries in Paris, and turn them into real commitments that are followed in order to reduce emissions around the world.
Obama admitted that “all of this will be hard,” but said he’s convinced progress can be made.
