McCain: Sanders must be ‘consuming’ pot to think climate change is top

But make no mistake, despite Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris, Sanders isn’t changing his campaign’s approach.

“There may be those who will try to take advantage of the generosity of our country and the ability to move freely within our borders through this federal resettlement program, and we must ensure we are doing all we can to safeguard the security of Americans”, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said Monday. The Pentagon has consistently called climate change a “threat multiplier”.

BERNIE SANDERS: Absolutely. In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.

Eckman said he was there to hear more from Sanders.

The Vermont independent, citing the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency, has said multiple times on the campaign trail that he believes climate change is the country’s top national security threat. Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley used more accurate language when he said, “One of the things that preceded the failure of the nation-state of Syria and the rise of ISIS was the effect of climate change and the mega-drought that affected that region, wiped out farmers, drove people to cities, created a humanitarian crisis”.

Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell, codirectors of the Center for Climate and Security, told us via email that there is “certainly an indirect link” between climate change and terrorism. “Political and economic factors prove to be much better and more compelling explanations for men to fight other men.”, wrote National security expert Jeff Kueter with the George C. Marshall Institute in a 2014 paper.

This is the second time that Sanders has made this statement during the Democratic debates. Bernie Sanders addressed questions about the blowback to accepting Syrian refugees in the United States in the wake of the Paris attacks, his foreign policy experience, the differences between him and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and controversy surrounding if and when he will give a planned speech on democratic socialism. “In other words, climate change could drive a less stable world, and non-state actors may exploit that”. In the case of Syria, for example, an intense drought in 2006 and 2007 dropped crop yields, driving people into the cities and helping to set the stage for protests against the Assad regime that-when brutally suppressed-turned to revolt. “And it is exactly the kind of environment in which extremist groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Hezbollah flourish”.

“The answer to stopping the Syrian civil war wasn’t necessarily to stop carbon emissions”, he said. On that issue, he said, “good public policy is good politics”.

It also wasn’t sufficient for conflict. “It is complicated, and it is not direct, but the relationship is there, and if we don’t talk about it, it’s only going to get worse”.

“What he said about environmentalism and climate warming being the number one issue, I really feel what he’s saying is that we are at a precipice and what’s going to happen is there’s going to be shortages of resources”, said Martha Fort, 60, a painter from Butler, Ohio. If you don’t talk about how drought and lack of food and water leads to insecurity, then these problems don’t get dealt with.