Fox News contributor Steve Moore dismissed President Obama's U.N. address on climate change arguing that terror threats are “a security reason for the United States to develop our own oil and gas,” ignoring a decade of warnings from the U.S. military calling climate change a national security threat and a terrorism threat multiplier. 

On September 23, President Obama spoke at the United Nations Climate Summit calling for a more “ambitious” agreement to tackle climate change globally.

During the September 23 edition of Happening Now, Fox contributor Steve Moore complained that “the president is talking about climate change and reducing our output of oil and gas, when if we want to undermine and destroy the finances of ISIS and other terrorist networks, we should produce as much oil and gas and hurt them in the pocketbook”:

But Moore's recommendations only serve to increase the threat of climate change by increasing our dependence on fossil fuels and undermining United States energy security. A report from the Energy Security Leadership Council determined that the addressing “the economy's heavy reliance on petroleum” is the key challenge for achieving energy security in the U.S.

Military officials have also warned of the negative impact of climate change since 2003. Most recently, the U.S. Department of Defense released the 2014 version of their Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) highlighting that “climate change poses another significant challenge for the United States and the world at large” and that its impacts are “threat multipliers” that “can enable terrorist activity.” From the Review:

The impacts of climate change may increase the frequency, scale, and complexity of future missions, including defense support to civil authorities, while at the same time undermining the capacity of our domestic installations to support training activities. 

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The pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world. These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions - conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.

Moore, the Heritage Foundation's chief economist, also ignored a first of its kind statement from U.S. Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, in which he labeled the threat of climate change as “one of the most important challenges of our time.” Lew said during a September 22 interview on the economic costs of climate change, that “the economic cost of climate change is not limited to one sector of our economy. It threatens our agricultural productivity, our transportation infrastructure and power grids, and drives up the incidence of costly healthcare problems.” Lew stressed that “global action is imperative, and it is a good investment in global economic growth.”