Obama said Wednesday that he would also honor the island’s military history as the site of a critical battle during World War II.
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And our ability to not just designate, but build on, this incredible natural beauty, which is home to 7,000 marine species that sees millions of birds, many of them endangered, sea turtles, the Hawaiian monk seal, black coral – all sorts of species that in many other places we no longer see – for us to be able to extend that 550,000 miles in the way that we’ve done ensures not only that the Midway Atoll is protected, but that the entire ecosystem will continue to generate the kind of biodiversity.
Less than 5 percent of American voters say the environment is the most important issue facing the country, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling between July 24 and August 21, and 35 percent say climate change will not affect the way they vote in the November 8 election to pick Obama’s successor.
The announcement comes as President Obama makes a two-day swing through Hawaii and Midway Atoll on his way to an worldwide climate-focused summit in China.
“There are countries that now are at risk, and they have to move as a effect of climate change”, Obama said. After Midway, Obama planned to open his final trip to Asia on Saturday with a visit to China, a chance to showcase his unlikely partnership with Chinese President Xi Jinping on global warming.
Obama’s decision to expand the monument was the subject of fierce debate within Hawaii, with both sides invoking Native Hawaiian culture to argue why it should or shouldn’t be expanded.
Obama and Xi have been strident advocates of the sweeping global emissions-cutting deal struck in Paris a year ago.
The island visit bookends Obama’s trip past year to Alaska, where he hiked on a shrinking glacier, which he said was a “preview” of what would happen if climate change goes unchecked. Claimed by the U.S.in the middle of the 19th century, Midway became a hub of activity in the early 20th century amid efforts to lay a telegraph cable spanning the Pacific Ocean.
In June 1942, USA forces, tipped by code-breakers that the Japanese navy was planning an attack, sank four Japanese aircraft carriers and a heavy cruiser in a giant air-sea battle.
President Barack Obama speaks to the 2016 Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders at the East West Center, in Honolulu, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016.
Still, the wealth of biological diversity here is almost unparalleled: millions of birds, hundreds of species of fish and marine invertebrates, green sea turtles and Hawaiian monk seals.
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A portion of Midway Atoll in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument is seen from Air Force One, with President Barack Obama aboard, as it comes in for a landing at Henderson Field, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016. More albatrosses live on Midway than anywhere else in the world.
