Updated at 6.55am
US PRESIDENT BARACK Obama has been testing his survival skills on a trip through Alaska as he attempts to drive home the impact climate change is already having on America.
On Tuesday he travelled to southern Alaska’s Kenai Fjords National Park, where he stood against the backdrop of the vast, but receding glacier, where posts mark the ice’s retreat since 1815.
In his effort to bring his message to a broader audience, the president also got a “crash course in survival techniques” from insect-eating British adventurer Bear Grylls.
The footage will be used for an upcoming episode of “Running Wild With Bear Grylls.” Previous guests have been asked to eat mice, jumping out of planes and climb desert monoliths. And of course there’s the obvious drinking of one’s own urine, though it is unclear whether the president had the full Bear Grylls experience.
The White House has admitted that the Secret Service had vetoed some high octane suggestions from the producers.
Speaking about the signs marking the ice’s retreat, Obama said:
This is as good of a signpost of what we’re dealing with when it comes to climate change as just about anything.
He pointed to a changing climate that has brought less snow and longer, hotter summers and an icy retreat has been anything but glacial.
- With reporting from AFP.
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