Former VP Biden urges need to deal with global warming

Former US Vice President Joe Biden stressed the need Wednesday to address global warming, despite President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord, and voiced confidence that the US can overcome its current introspective phase.

Biden said that it is “overwhelmingly” in the interest of future generations to deal with climate change, “notwithstanding what some folks in this administration may think.”

Biden said his first report from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he took office, identified global warming as the greatest danger to US physical security — through population displacement and war.

Speaking at a conference in Athens on Wednesday, Biden insisted that the vast majority of the American people disagree with Trump’s decision.

Biden as vice president supported former President Barack Obama’s efforts to take part in the Paris accord and fight the effects of climate change.

Speaking in Athens, he also upheld the key significance for the US of European security and the trans-Atlantic alliance.

“I know at this moment there are questions about what kind of leadership the world can expect from the United States of America, going forward,” Biden said. “But I want to be very clear that there is still in the United States of America a strong bipartisan consensus, especially in the United States Congress, that European security is vital to US security.”

“The United States has had moments of turning inwards in the past. But we’ve always overcome them, just as we will overcome this,” he said.

“History has proven that the defense of free nations in Europe has always, always, always, been in America’s best interests and is America’s fight.”

Biden was later due to meet Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. [AP]