President Obama says climate change is a national security threat. Too bad he doesn't act like it.

Obama wants to appear tough-minded and realistic. He's failing on both counts.

Barack Obama
(Image credit: AP Photo)

President Obama, in his Dr. Jekyll mode when it comes to climate change, has been advancing one of my favorite arguments on the issue: that it is a threat to national security. This isn't so much strictly true — our armed forces or cities are not under enemy fire — as a good way of shaking people out of the common idea that climate change is some marginal environmentalist issue. On the contrary, it's up there with the economy in importance.

As Greg Sargent reports, Obama brought up the idea in a speech yesterday before a graduating class of Coast Guard cadets, saying that the "urgent need to combat and adapt to climate change" would shape their whole careers. He's definitely right about that!

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.