Pompeo Sees Ways to Handle Climate Change, Including Moving

"The climate's been changing a long time," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in expressing optimism that the challenges of climate change will be met. "We will do the things necessary as the climate changes," he told the Washington Times. Among the steps that were necessary in the past: "Societies reorganize, we move to different places, we develop technology and innovation." A booming economy that encourages "structural innovators and creative people" to build solutions is key, Pompeo said.

Pompeo's evaluations of climate change have made news before. Last month, Pompeo welcomed rapidly falling ice levels in the Arctic, per CNN. "Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade — this could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days," he said in Finland. In his interview with the Times, Pompeo said: "If waters rise, I was just in the Netherlands, all below sea level, right? Living a wonderful, thriving economic situation." US intelligence officials have said, per CNN, that climate change poses a host of security risks: "threats to public health, historic levels of human displacement, assaults on religious freedom, and the negative effects of environmental degradation." The results could be "competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent." (More climate change stories.)