Via Climate Change Dispatch:
Just days after the ISIS-inspired Orlando shooting, Secretary of State John Kerry was busy touring the Arctic Circle this week to see how climate change was affecting the region. But he did make one stunning admission: ISIS and terrorism poses a bigger threat than climate change, revealing a drastic paradigm shift. On Thursday, Kerry told reporters in Norway that “I’d probably give violent extremism — have to say one of — the defining threat[s] of a generation.” He also said, “Besides the fight against extremism is to deal with the enormous battle of climate change.” In the past, Kerry has likened climate changeas the most serious threat facing mankind, and the “largest weapon of mass destruction.”
According to news reports, Kerry was accompanied by a gaggle of journalists in “small Zodiac-type inflatable boats.” Kerry and Børge Brende, Norway’s minister of foreign affairs, motored around the Arctic Ocean after leaving a research station in Ny-Alesund, a small town on the island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard, Norway. He also visited Denmark on Wednesday to see what could be done about melting ice. Both trips were planned to show Kerry’s ongoing concern about global warming ahead of an international conference on oceans he will host in September. Kerry has made climate change his top priority as secretary of state, and this will be his third such event.