Washington (CNN) Sen. Lindsey Graham is sounding an alarm on climate change -- and hoping to make it loud enough for President Donald Trump to hear.

"I would encourage the President to look long and hard at the science and find a solution. I'm tired of playing defense on the environment," the South Carolina Republican said in a news conference on Wednesday.

Graham said acknowledging -- and embracing -- the climate crisis as an issue in the GOP can be a good thing, and the party is ignoring it at its own peril.

"We will win the solution debate, but the only way you're going to win the debate is admit we've got a problem," Graham said. "Let's talk about climate change from the innovative and not the regulatory approach."

Trump himself has consistently confused much of the science around climate change. In an interview with Piers Morgan in June, Trump said , "It used to be called global warming, that wasn't working, then it was called climate change and now actually it is called extreme weather."