First president in Arctic, Obama issues 'wake up call'

President Obama wrapped up a three-day tour of Alaska Wednesday, becoming the first president to venture north of the Arctic Circle while sounding the alarm on climate change.

"I don’t need to tell people here in Alaska what’s happening," he told more than 1,000 people in the coastal village of Kotzebue — about one-third of the mostly Alaska native population of the town gathered in a local school. "Over the past two years, I've been trying to make the rest of the country more aware of a changing climate, but you're already living it."

Whereas previous stops on his Alaska trip were focused on demonstrating the problem of melting glaciers, spreading wildfires, thawing permafrost and rising seas, Obama focused Wednesday on efforts to make communities more resilient.

"If another country to wipe out an American town, we’d do everything in our power to protect it," he said. "What's happening here should be America's wake-up call. It's the world's wake up call."

The White House announced a grab-bag of small-bore actions to understand and mitigate the effects of climate change. Those steps include putting the Denali Commission in charge of coordinating resilience efforts, helping tribes make disaster declaration requests to the president, and creating a new satellite-based elevation map of the Arctic by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.

Obama spent much of the day Wednesday touring Dillingham, a Bristol Bay village, going fishing, visiting shops and watching — and then participating in — traditional Yup'ik dances with school children. "I've been practicing," he told them.