President Obama christened the “GLACIER” (Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience) conference in Anchorage, Alaska Monday with a powerful, damning speech that put all climate change-denying politicians on notice. In a rare moment of quasi rage — and without naming names — the Leader of the Free World scolded leaders who he claims are setting children and future generations up to live in a caustic, sick world where rain stings, air makes you cough and the ocean currents push around a cold brownish hot dog water.

Okay, so maybe the last few things aren’t necessarily true, but they get across the underlying message, and the one that Obama is slanging hard (he actually said this in his speech): “We are not moving fast enough. None of the nations represented here are moving fast enough.”

He also slid in the fact that the clock is ticking, and not for us, but for our babies, because if we don’t act soon we’re literally going to “condemn our children to a world they will no longer have the capacity to repair.”

And, yes, he didn’t hesitate to throw a proverbial combination of punches at those usual suspects in Washington who are either in the back pockets of BIG ENERGY and/or BIG OIL or playing to an electorate too stupid to grasp simple science (via NBC News):

He directly attacked politicians who argue that climate change isn’t real, saying they “are on their own shrinking island.”

“The time to heed the critics and the cynics and the deniers is past,” the president said.

Unless the world acts more aggressively and more quickly, he said, “entire nations will find themselves under severe, severe problems: More drought. More floods. Rising sea levels. Greater migration. More refugees. More scarcity. More conflict.”

In language unusual for a diplomatic setting, Obama contended, “Any leader willing to take a gamble on a future like that, any leader who refuses to take this issue seriously or treats it like a joke, is not fit to lead.”

“It’s not enough to just have conferences,” he said. “It’s not enough to just talk the talk. We’ve got to walk the walk.”

Obama spits out his mouthguard and sits on his corner stool. Biden massages his shoulders and squirts water directly into his parched gullet. Did he win the round?