Obama gave a hint at what one of his biggest post-presidential projects will be

President Barack Obama gave a huge hint at what one of his top priorities will be after he relinquishes the Oval Office in January: climate change.

Obama made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times in his home state of Hawaii.

"What makes climate change difficult is that it is not an instantaneous catastrophic event," Obama told The Times. "It's a slow-moving issue that, on a day-to-day basis, people don't experience and don't see."

Click through images of President Obama's first 100 days in the White House:

Obama — who called the charts that his climate advisors brief him on an almost daily basis "terrifying" — said that his efforts to slow the planet's warming will be the most "consequential legacy" of his presidency.

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And he's showing no signs of slowing down his efforts even as his return to civilian life is imminent, going so far as to hint that he hopes that he will be more effective at fighting climate change after he leaves office.

"My hope," he told The Times. "Is that maybe as ex-president I can have a little more influence on some of my Republican friends, who I think up until now have been resistant to the science."

Read The New York Times' full interview here, or watch the interview below: