Obama: klimatförändringarna är ett säkerhetshot

USA:s president i längre intervju.
The New York Times publicerade i veckan delar av en längre intervju med USA:s president Barack Obama, gjord av Thomas L. Friedman för Showtimes tv-serie om klimatet, Years of Living Dangerously.
I intervju berättar Obama bland annat att han ser de globala klimatförändringarna som ett direkt säkerhetshot med inverkan både på USA:s inrikes- och utrikespolitik:

– [W]hen you start seeing how these shifts can displace people — entire countries can be finding themselves unable to feed themselves and the potential incidence of conflict that arises out of that — that gets your attention. There’s a reason why the quadrennial defense review – [which] the secretary of defense and the Joints Chiefs of Staff work on – identified climate change as one of our most significant national security problems. It’s not just the actual disasters that might arise, it is the accumulating stresses that are placed on a lot of different countries and the possibility of war, conflict, refugees, displacement that arise from a changing climate.

Obama ger även en känga till klimatskeptikerna bland landets politiker och säger i intervjun med Friedman:

– The baseline fact of climate change is not something we can afford to deny. And if you profess leadership in this country at this moment in our history, then you’ve got to recognize this is going to be one of the most significant long-term challenges, if not the most significant long-term challenge, that this country faces and that the planet faces. The good news is that the public may get out ahead of some of their politicians.