As President Barack Obama embarked on his final trip to Asia while still in office, climate change promised to rank near the top of his agenda, not far from traditional priorities like national security and trade. It will also invest in a USAID program to “promote resilience, enhance access to climate finance and improve national capacity to manage and monitor adaptation programs” in the Pacific.
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Obama isn’t the first president to visit Midway; Richard Nixon held secret talks there with the South Vietnamese president in 1969.
He’s made climate issues a focal point of his trip so far, telling an global audience in Hawaii on Wednesday that the USA and other governments need to do more to address climate change. President Barack Obama said Friday that the violence in Libya “is just one more chapter in the change that is unfolding” across the Middle East and North Africa. The.
The White House announced last week that Obama was quadrupling the size of the Papahanaumokuakea marine sanctuary, which includes Midway.
“Let me start by saying that this is hallowed ground”, Obama said, noting that this was the site of the 1942 Battle of Midway, where “a number of young men lost their lives here”.
President Barack Obama announced Wednesday evening that the U.S. will commit $30 Million to its partners in the Pacific.
President Obama visited a far-flung island in the Pacific Ocean on Thursday to warn of the dangers that climate change pose to marine wildlife and coastal communities.
U.S. President Barack Obama greets military personnel after he arrives on Air Force One at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016, in Honolulu.
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“There are countries that now are at risk, and they have to move as a effect of climate change”, Obama said. More albatrosses live on Midway than anywhere else in the world. Enlarging the monument reflects Obama’s strategy of using his executive powers to put lands and waters off-limits to development, despite concerns from critics who oppose what they call his heavy-handed approach. Supporters argued the larger monument was needed to protect a place considered sacred by Native Hawaiians by making it off-limits to commercial fishing and recreational activities. But Obama’s aides argued fishermen could make up that deficit by increasing production elsewhere. He hopped to Midway from Honolulu on a smaller version of Air Force One, landing on an airstrip that gained prominence when the Battle of Midway became a turning point in World War II.
