John Kerry: Climate change as dangerous as the Islamic State

Secretary of State John Kerry made clear during recent remarks with foreign leaders: Dealing with climate change demands the same level of “immediacy” as dealing with Islamic State terrorists, he said.

Mr. Kerry faulted global warming with the creation of “climate refugees” and maintained that weather changes were causing the world’s nation’s to battle over dwindling and precious resources, such as water, The Hill reported.

“We see people fighting over water in some places,” he said, The Hill reported. “There are huge challenges to food security and challenges to the ecosystem, our fisheries and … the acidification of the ocean is a challenge for all of us. And when you accrue all of this, while we are confronting ISIL, and we are confronting terrorism and we are confronting Ebola and other things, those are immediate.”

Mr. Kerry also the long-term consequences for ignoring the problem of climate change would lead to tremendous costs.

“This also has an immediacy that people need to come to understand, but it has even greater longer-term consequences that can cost hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars, lives and the security of the world,” Mr. Kerry said, The Hill reported.

This isn’t the first time Mr. Kerry has drawn a parallel between terrorism and climate change. In past weeks, he’s angered several on Capitol Hill for painting climates change in the same dangerous light as terrorism, and suggesting the two were equivalents in terms of the risks they bring the United States, The Hill reported.

He made the recent comments just ahead of Tuesday’s U.S. climate summit in New York, where it’s expected President Obama will urge 125 leaders to take on global warming with “ambitious” proposals and reforms, The Hill said.