Obama: Global Warming Will Destroy Nat’l Parks, Threatens the Statue of Liberty

President Obama warned Saturday that failing to act aggressively against global warming "could threaten icons like Ellis Island" and the Statue of Liberty. 

Speaking from Yosemite National Park, Obama warned that global warming threatens the future of America's national parks. 

"The biggest challenge we're going to face in protecting this place, and places like this, is climate change," Obama said. "Make no mistake, climate change is no longer just a threat, it's already a reality. I was talking to some of the rangers here. Here in Yosemite, meadows are drying out. Bird ranges are shifting farther northward. Alpine mammals like pikas are being forced further up-slope to escape higher temperature." 

"As we look ahead in the coming years and decades, rising temperatures could mean no more glaciers at Glacier National Park, no more Joshua Trees at Joshua Tree National Park," he continued. "Rising seas could destroy vital ecosystems in the Everglades. And at some point could threaten national icons like Ellis Island. And that's not the America I want to pass onto the next generation."

Obama also warned against attempts to undo his global warming efforts. 

"We can't treat these things as something that we deal with later, that it somebody else's problem," he said.
"It shouldn't lead to careless suggestions that somehow we don't get serious about the carbon emissions that are released into the atmosphere, or we scrap an international treaty that we spent years on just trying to put together to deal with this."