One day after Secretary of State John Kerry told a House Committee that ISIS is the ‘enemy of Islam’ he told an audience that people are killing each other all over the world because of a lack of water. While speaking at the 2014 Frontiers in Development Forum, Kerry actually said this (h/t WS):

Climate change means the heatwaves we’re already seeing, the extraordinary level of fires because of drought that is beyond the hundred-year mark. It’s the 500-year mark. Water shortages also way beyond hundred-year marks. All of this means conflicts over resources and serious implications for feeding the world’s growing population. Development is the only possible way, and it’s only possible if we grow more sustainably, if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, if we transition to a low-carbon economy.

One of the privileges of traveling as I do or Mary Robinson does or Raj does is we see this. We see it now happening. There are people killing each other over water in certain parts of the world. There are people who are refugees because of the lack of food and the changes and the absence of adequate agricultural policies in parts of the world. So this is a critical moment. This is not conjecture. This is not pie in the sky. This is not some time down the road; it’s now, and we are compelled to respond.

It’s one thing for a New York Times writer like Thomas Friedman to suggest that the holocaust going on in Syria is the result of global warming. It’s quite another for the Secretary of State to do so. As mass genocide is taking place all over the globe, at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists, ignoring it becomes increasingly difficult for people like Kerry.

So what does he do? Well, he blames it on global warming. He does so while not only denying that a group which calls itself the Islamic State is actually Islamic but that the Islamic State is an ‘enemy of Islam’.