President Obama Talks Climate Change and Basketball During Twitter Q&A

Not exactly a slam dunk

Share

With no prospect of re-election hanging over his head, President Obama is using the remainder of his time in office as a chance to talk about a political minefield, climate change. He mentioned it last week at the Coast Guard commencement exercises, and today he took to his newly formed twitter account to answer questions about climate change.

The first question he answered had to do with the politics of it all:

The president also quickly discovered the limitations of a 144 character limit when asked about the recent decision to allow Shell to begin drilling in the Arctic:

But after just a few answers, @POTUS veered off topic, answering questions about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and basketball.

Apparently even the President doesn’t like talking about climate change for too long. He got back on track quickly enough, reiterating that climate change is a national security issue:

One of the reasons that it is so easy to derail conversations about climate, as President Obama found out, is that many people have other, more immediate personal worries that push global warming to the back burner, like student loans:

Luckily, there are ways that we can combat the very real issues associated with climate change, including education and investing in renewable resources:

After just 30 minutes, he signed off asking people to let him know how they’re addressing the issue with the hashtag #ActOnClimate

But not before answering one last basketball question.