We announced we were going to be talking to you.

Yeah.

And we said on the internet send us some questions.

Right.

Because we want to have a dialogue.

Yeah. And we'll ask the president.

And the internet blew up.

It was incredible.

I do a lot of environmental pieces and whenever I do an environmental piece,

out come the box, out come the eggs, you know on Twitter.

Right.

Because there's all kinds of negative stuff-.

That they want to caused up.

That's every day for you.

Yeah.

How do you do it?

How do you handle the, the controversy, the negativity?

Yeah.

Why be pres-, it's, are you a masochist?

You know, l, l, let me tell you, this is a fun job.

Right. I, every day I wake up and

I get a bird's eye view on what's going on everywhere in the world.

Hm.

I can have as much of an impact

on the things that are important to people as anybody on the planet?

Right. You know,

if you're applying yourself steadily every single day to

the job and you're keeping your North Star which is,

when I leave this office I want things to be a little bit better.

Then the day to day criticism, the chatter,

the noise, is something that you end up blocking out.

And the longer you're in the job the more you're likely to take the long view.

Let's take something like climate change.

Let's.

We just got back from Antarctica and Antarctica is melting,

Greenland is melting as fast as they can.

Sea levels are rising, yet many people are putting their head in the sand.

It's right over the hill, Shane.

Yeah. Pine Island and

Thwaites are right over the hill, 100 miles from here.

Yeah.

All that ice, it's just a matter of time, is going to fall down to sea.

If I can change how the country thinks about this.

Mm-hm. As, as a serious, immediate threat.

Not some distant vague thing.

Which is crucial.

If I can encourage and gain commitments from the Chinese

to put forward a serious plan to start curbing their greenhouse gases.

And that then allows us to leverage the entire world for

the conference that will be taking this place this year in, in Paris.

And if I'm able to double fuel efficiency standards, and if I'm able to

make appliances more efficient, and to double the production of clean energy.

If I'm able to do all those things now, when I'm done.

We're still going to have a heck of a problem, but

we will have made enough progress that, the next president and

the next generations can start building on it, you start getting some momentum.

Which is rational, sane That's a great answer,

however Yeah.

You have people.

For example Senator Inhofe whose whose throwing snowballs,

whose saying the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American

public is that we can do anything about climate change or that it's even real.

Senator from Oklahoma.

We keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record.

I asked the chair, do you know what this is?

It's a snowball.

And, that's just from outside here.

So it's very, very cold out.

Very unseasonal.

So here Mr. President, catch this.

Throwing a snowball would be funny- Yeah.

If it weren't for

the fact that he's chairman of the Senate committee on the environment.

That's disturbing.

So you have a very sane and rational plan, but

we're not acting in a sane and rational way.

Yeah.

Well I, and I, I, I'll tell you.

Climate change is an example of the hardest problems to solve,

the hardest thing to do in politics and in government is to make

sacrifices now for a long term payoff.

But here's, here's what keeps me optimistic.

Is, you talk to Malia and Sasha, you know?

Mm-hm. 16 and 13.

Mm-hm.

And the sophistication and awareness that they have about environmental issues,

compared to my generation or yours.

Yeah.

They're way ahead of the game.

There's always gonna be resistance to change.

And some of that is gonna be generational.

I guarantee you that the Republican party will have to change it's approach

to climate change, because voters will insist upon it.

The challenge on something like climate change is,

there comes a point of no return.

Mm-hm.

And you do have to make sure that we get at this thing quick enough and

with enough force, to be able to make a difference.

Why is the resistance so strong?

Well some of it's economic.

If you poll folks, they're concerned about climate change.

But they're more concerned about gas prices.

Right.

You can't fault somebody for being concerned about paying the bills or

being able to fill up your tank to get to your job.

In some cases, though, you have elected officials who are shills for

the oil companies or the fossil fuel industry.

And there's a lot of money involved.

Typically in Congress the committees of jurisdiction, like the energy committees,

are populated by folks from places that pump a lot of oil and pump a lot of gas.

In our research the environment or

global warming is the number one issue for, for Gen Y.

But another issue is dysfunction.

Yeah. You know,

it seems that from the outside that.

From the inside too.

That Washington, if you look at global warming for example.

Yeah.

And you're right, the younger generation, there is no debate.

Yeah.

Yet they see.

This fighting, this gridlock in- Yeah.

In Washington.

Or for other things.

Just for example, now sort of chicken that's being played

with Department of Homeland Security for example.

Republicans are playing politics with the critical funding.

For the Department of Homeland Security and threatening a shut down.

The President's executive amnesty is lawless and unconstitutional.

These are things that our taxes pay for.

Right. Yet

it seems to be a game that's being played.

And young people are dissatisfied and angry, but they don't know what to do.

What would you, what would you tell them?

Well, let me say a couple things.

A lot of times, from the outside, and sometimes mainstream media reports this

as a food fight, and it's a problem of both parties just being partisan.

Well, that's just not accurate.

On climate change, 90% of Democrats agree with me and

90% of Republicans oppose any action on it.

And a sizable portion of their party deny it even exists.

There have been times in history where Democrats have been unreasonable.

Mm. There have been times where

Republicans have led the way.

But right now, on a lot of the issues that young people care about,

it's not both sides arguing and creating gridlock.

You've got one side that is denying the facts.

Mm. Who are often motivated, principally,

by opposing whatever it is that I propose.

Now, that's not inevitable to our democracy.

That's some,

that's a phase that the Republican Party's going through right now.

And it'll outgrow that phase.

The thing that we do have to worry about is the fact that

the pace of change globally is so quick.

Mm. That we may not have the luxury

of 20 years or ten years of not getting a lot done.

Mm-hm.

If we want to deal with not just climate change but the potential for a pandemic.

With terrorism, with the challenges around cyber security.

Some of these things are just moving.

One thing young people could do

immediately- Yes.

Is vote. Okay.

And the fact of the matter is, is that in the last midterm election,

about a third of eligible voters voted.

Mm-hm.

And so, if you've got gridlock and you've got people who aren't producing,

the fact that a lot of them got rewarded with reelection and

the people who were in power creating the gridlock stayed in power,

that's the consequence of everybody staying home and acting cynical.

And the minute you withdraw in that way from the process of politics,

well, then you're destined to have the existing power structures call the shots.

47 Republican senators put their names today to this open letter to Iran

informing Iran that any nuclear agreement not voted in by Congress will be viewed

as, quote, nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and

Ayatollah Khamenei.

How does it feel when you're trying to get a deal done with Iran,

for example, and then you have senators who are sending separate letters?

Yeah. Well, it I'm embarrassed for them.

Yeah.

Because it's not how America does business.

Mm-hm.

I think it's entirely legitimate for

my friends in the Senate who signed that letter to ask very

hard questions about how can we assure that Iran's not getting a nuclear weapon.

You know, why would we lift sanctions now given

how they're causing problems in other part of the world.

Given the venomous things they've said about Israel.

You know, how can we even negotiate with them?

Now, I will have responses to each of those questions, and

I will say that I've committed to making sure Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon.

I'm prepared to take all options to prevent them from getting a nuclear

weapon, but the absolute best option is a diplomatic resolution.

And if we do get a deal, it's going to be because I can verify that they won't have

a weapon and I will have the international community helping us verify that.

We can have that debate.

For them to address a letter to the Ayatollah,

the supreme leader of Iran, who they claim is our mortal enemy, and

their basic argument to them is, don't deal with our president,

because you can't trust him to follow through on an agreement.

That's close to unprecedented.

Mm-hm. We were

looking at the history to see if there was an example of it.

We couldn't find one.

And by doing so, they were effectively making common cause with the hardliners in

Iran who also don't want any kind of diplomatic resolution,

because they are invested in getting a nuclear weapon.

Mm-hm.

So this is a good example, I think, of where the state of our politics.

Sure. That leads Republicans to be more worried

about a Tea Party primary than they are about what ordinary folks are thinking.

It damages the country, it damages our standing, it's not productive.

In this day and age where we've got such big issues, we can't afford it.

We embedded with ISIL last summer for a month.

One of the biggest questions that I had was, how did they become so

popular so fast?

How did they get so many foreign fighters from America, from the UK-.

Mm-hm. You know, from Scandinavia,

from all over the world, go there, outstrip al-Qaeda almost overnight?

Yeah.

And so, A, how did they become so popular out of nowhere?

And then, B, how do we stop them?

Two things.

One is ISIL is a direct outgrowth of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Mm-hm.

That grew out of our invasion.

Which is an example of unintended consequences,

which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.

We've got a 60 country coalition.

We will slowly push back ISIL out of Iraq.

I'm confident that will happen.

But what I'm worried about, and

what we have to stay worried about, is, even if ISIL is defeated,

the underlying problem of disaffected Sunnis around the world,

but particularly in some of these areas, including Libya, including Yemen.

Where a young man who's growing up, has no education and

has no prospects for the future, is looking around, and

the one way that he can get validation, power, respect as if he's a fighter.

And this looks like the toughest gang around, so let me affiliate with them.

Mm-hm.

And now you're giving me a, a religious rationale for doing this.

That's a problem we're gonna have, have generally and

we can't keep on thinking about counter-terrorism and

security as entirely separate from diplomacy, development, education.

All these things that are considered soft, but

in fact, are vital to our national security.

And we do not fund those.

If you asked the average person, how much do we spend on foreign aid?