WASHINGTON, April 23 (UPI) -- President Clinton warned in an ABC-TV interview aired Saturday night that unless steps are taken to curb global warming, the climate of the United States would be changed.
He warned of more frequent flooding, heat waves, storms and "extreme weather events generally," as well as public health consequences.
"The climate is changing, and the globe is warming at an unsustainable rate," Clinton said in the interview with movie star Leonardo DiCaprio, in connection with Earth Day.
Clinton said: If global warming is not slowed "and unltimately reversed, what will happen is the polar ice caps will melt more rapidly, sea levels will rise, you will have the dangere of flooding in places like the precious Florida Everglades, or the sugar cane fields of Louisiana; island nations could literally be buried."
The president said "citizen action" and voters forcing politicians to address the issue "are the things that I think need to be done right now and for the next several years, to get America on the right track."
"I think we have to make climate change a local and personal matter, in the same way other environmental issues are," he said.