Obama Mixes Up Ireland, Scotland and Shakespeare During Climate Speech

Former President Barack Obama flubbed the difference between Scotland and Ireland during a Monday address at a climate-change conference in Glasgow — and botched a reference to Shakespeare in the process.

“Solving a problem this big, this complex and this important has never happened all at once,” Obama said during a speech at the COP26 conference in Scotland’s most populous city. “Since we’re in the Emerald Isles here, let me quote the bard, William Shakespeare. ‘What wound,’ he writes, ‘did ever heal but by degrees.'”

The problem: The Emerald Isles refer to Ireland. And Shakespeare, the 16th-century poet, hailed from England — not Scotland or Ireland.

Obama’s speech was directed at young listeners. More than 100,000 people marched in Glasgow two days earlier led by Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate activist from Sweden who bemoaned in March that President Joe Biden was not doing “nearly enough” to act on climate change.

“I want you to stay angry,” Obama said later in the speech. “I want you to stay frustrated. Keep pushing for more and more. Because that’s required to meet this challenge. Gird yourself for a marathon, not a sprint.”

Watch above via CNN.