As foreign minister of Norway, I learnt how natural changes provoked by climate change are creating new sources of political instability.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Climate change is having a dramatic effect on the ground.
Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science.
People are seeing the impact of climate change around them in extraordinary patterns of floods and droughts, wildfires, heatwaves and powerful storms.
Climate change - for so long an abstract concern for an academic few - is no longer so abstract. Even the Bush administration's Climate Change Science Programme reports 'clear evidence of human influences on the climate system.'
In the case of climate change, the threat is long-term and diffuse and requires broad international action for the benefit of people decades in the future. And in politics, the urgent always trumps the important, and that is what makes it a very difficult and challenging issue.
Climate change is very real.
Climate change was a point of division between Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney. The president declared climate change a global threat, acknowledged that the actions of humanity were deepening the crisis, and pledged to do something about it if elected.
The forces that are in play on climate change essentially revolve around the generation of power, the transportation of goods and services and people, and the sorts of materials that we use to fuel the whole of our civilisation.
Climate change is such a huge issue that it requires strong, concerted, consistent and enduring action by governments.
It should simply be an empirical matter whether the climate is changing or not and whether we're responsible. But the various sides of the debate have now become so tribal that it's no longer a matter of changing our views as more information comes in.
No opposing quotes found.