Everyone wants to have clean air and safe drinking water, but it’s an “enormous mistake” for President Joe Biden to call climate change the number one threat facing the United States when there are so many threats that are going on, particularly with China and with the crisis at the nation’s southern border, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday.
“I could list half a dozen other challenges we face, not the least of which is the crisis on our southern border today, that far outrank the urgency of climate change,” said Pompeo, now a Fox News contributor, on “America’s Newsroom.”
His comments come as Biden’s virtual climate summit, which concludes Friday, has attracted national figures from around the world, including Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Biden has brought the United States back into the Paris Agreement to cut global emissions and has made fighting climate change a top priority. His summit is being seen as an opportunity to convince other world leaders that the United States has returned as a leader on the issue, but Pompeo said he has his doubts.
“When I see these international commitments and gab fests around the world, the only country likely to comply with its commitments will be the United States of America,” said Pompeo. “They will take us for patsies. We’ll execute our climate change goals on the backs of working men and women and other countries will laugh at us … it’s a foolish proposition and one that will harm the United States of America.”
Meanwhile, Xi isn’t coming into a climate deal to benefit the United States or his own people, said Pompeo, and his goal is to harm America while boosting China’s power worldwide.
“This is an authoritarian regime, Marxist in its economic approach, and they have big designs on displacing the United States of America as the world’s leading superpower,” said Pompeo.
Meanwhile, the negotiations between the United States and other countries, including Iran, China, and Russia are posing a “real risk” to relations with the nation’s allies in the Middle East who have joined the Abraham Accords with Israel.
“The deterrents model the Trump administration built was the right one,” he said. “When you demonstrate weakness and absence of resolve you invite these kinds of coercive activities from our adversaries across the world.”
Pompeo further dismissed the “feel-good meeting” that was held with Putin during the summit, saying he made a “fake promise about the Russian environment.”
“Their own source of revenue is fossil fuels,” he said. “To think they’ll give that up is crazy.”
The meeting also didn’t raise other issues with Putin, including the actions taking place in southeast Ukraine, the series of threats the Russians pose in Syria and around the world, and more, said Pompeo.
“Somehow they think the feel-good moment for climate change overrides those and that will not serve the American people well,” he concluded.
Source: Newmax
