Obama becomes first U.S. president to set foot north of Arctic Circle

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Kyle Johnson
  • JBER Public Affairs
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  President Barack Obama arrived in Alaska Monday.

During his three-day trip, he visited Anchorage, Seward, Dillingham and Kotzebue, to discuss the threat of climate change to America's future.

Obama visited Alaska locations to witness the impacts of climate change on this region - whose occupants are already living with the effects of climate change on their communities, their homes and their livelihoods.

The president, along with Secretary of State John Kerry and several foreign ministers, will discuss the challenges of how to best manage the future of the arctic region and the natural resources which are found here.

"Over the past 60 years, Alaska has warmed about twice as fast as the rest of the United States," Obama said in an address at the Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience (GLACIER) conference Monday. "Last year was Alaska's warmest year on record.

"The impacts here are very real."

Obama said these changes affect not just the countries around the Arctic, but around the world as well.

"Human activity is disrupting the climate," Obama said. "In many ways, faster than we had previously thought."

The president has declared climate change to be one of the most important issues our generation, and future generations, are going to face.

To fight this challenge, the United States is partnering with companies and other nations to reduce their environmental impact.

By visiting outlying cities on Alaska's coast, like Kotzebue, the president said he  intends to shine a spotlight onto the effects climate change is having on Alaskans.

The GLACIER conference, at which Obama spoke as part of his trip to Alaska, was designed to focus the world's attention on the most urgent issues facing the Arctic today and provide an unprecedented opportunity for foreign ministers and key stakeholders to define the region's most crucial challenges.

"We are not going to, any of us, solve these challenges by ourselves." the president  said. "We can only solve them together."

"Alaskans now lead the world in the development of hybrid wind-energy systems from remote grids, and it's expanding its solar and biomass resources," he said.

For more information on the president's visit to Alaska, visit www.whitehouse.gov/Alaska.