Obama: People Will Turn to Terrorism Because of Climate Change

O’DONNELL: “And you did say in the state of the union that no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change. Do you mean that it's a greater threat than terrorism?”

OBAMA: “What I mean by that is that we're going to get ISIL. They will be defeated. There will be ongoing efforts to disrupt the world order from terrorists, from rogue states, from cyber-attacks. There’s always some bad people out there trying to do bad things and we have to be vigilant in going after them. But if you start seeing the oceans rise by five, six, seven feet, if you see major shifts in weather patterns so that what had previously been bread baskets to the world unable to grow food, then you're seeing the kind of crisis that we can't deal with through the deployment of the marines. We can't deal with it through throwing money at it. What we know is that as human beings are placed under strain, then bad things happen. And if you look at world history, whenever people are desperate, when people start lacking food, when people are not able to make a living or take care of their families, that's when ideologies arise that are dangerous.”

O’DONNELL: “Donald Trump, who is the front runner on the Republican side, said your remarks are one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever heard in politics.

OBAMA: “Yeah. Well, you know, Mr. Trump should run back a tape recorder on some of the stuff he's said. But, look, here's what we know, 99.5 percent of scientists in the world say this is a really urgent problem. The only people who are still disputing it are either some Republicans in Congress or folks on the campaign trail.”