Obama says world must speed climate change fight

The US president stressed that climate change 'is happening here. It is happening now.'

US president Barack Obama, accompanied by secretary of state John Kerry greets dignitaries after speaking at the Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience (GLShow more

ANCHORAGE // US President Barack Obama warned Monday that climate change is no longer a problem of the future, but rather a challenge for now and one that will define the next century.

Describing the “urgent and growing” threat that was not being addressed quick enough, Obama sketched the problems already facing people living in one of America’s last wilderness frontiers.

› Watch Obama's speech: Obama: world must reach climate deal 'while we still can' - video

The challenge “will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other,” he told a conference in Anchorage, before a scheduled visit to a glacier.

“Human activity is disrupting the climate, in many ways faster than we thought,” he said, with one eye on Republicans who reject humans’ role in heating the planet.

“The deniers are increasingly alone, on their own shrinking island.

“The science is stark, it is sharpening, and it proves that this once-distant threat is now very much in the present.”

Obama also stressed that climate change “is happening here. It is happening now.”

He listed a thawing permafrost; warmer, more acidic oceans and rivers; species migration; shoreline erosion and longer bush fire seasons among a litany of problems.

“We are not moving fast enough,” Obama insisted, as he tries to build support for an international pact to curb warming.

In December, representatives from around the world will gather in Paris to agree to cap global temperature increases by two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels.

“This year, in Paris, must be the year that the world finally reaches an agreement to protect the one planet we’ve got while we still can,” Obama said.

Earlier, ministers from the United States, European nations, Japan, Singapore and South Korea issued a joint statement at the conference, vowing “strong determination” to reach an “ambitious outcome” at the December meeting.

While in Alaska, Obama will try to take his message to a broader audience by getting a “crash course in survival techniques” from insect-eating British adventurer Bear Grylls.

The footage will be used for an upcoming episode of “Running Wild With Bear Grylls.”

Grylls, a former special air service trooper, boasts that he pushes celebrities like New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees and Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet “beyond their limits.”

Tasks they have been given include eating mice, jumping out of planes and crossing desert canyons -- activities that the Secret Service would not normally allow the president to tackle.

* Agence France-Presse