Former President Barack Obama said during a speech on Monday that the United States has failed to adequately address climate change because of "hate, anger, racism, [and] mommy issues."

"Climate change, we're going to have to come up with some new technologies," Obama said during the second Obama Foundation Summit. "We could reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent, and it's not like we would all have to go back to caves and live off fire … The reason we don't do it is because we are still confused, blind, shrouded with hate, anger, racism, [and] mommy issues."

The future lies not in investing in technologies but in investing in people, according to Obama, who said his love of science and reason has earned him the nickname "Spock."

"I mean, we are fraught with stuff, and so if that's the case, then the single most important thing we have to invest in is … people," he said.

In his 2015 State of the Union Address, Obama said climate change was the single greatest threat to future generations. "[T]he best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe," he said.

When asked this week about whether climate change contributed to the devastation of the California wildfires, President Donald Trump said, "Is it happening? Things are changing. And I think, most importantly, we're doing things about [it]. We're going to make it better. We're going to make it a lot better. And it's going to happen as quickly as it can possibly happen."