Biden Defense Department Spokesman: Threat of China and Climate Change ‘Equally Important’

Defense Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday his department viewed the threats posed by China and by climate change to be equal in stature.

“Which is a bigger threat, the climate or China?” a reporter asked Kirby at a daily briefing.

“I think we get paid to examine all the threats to our national security, and I don’t know that it does anybody good to put some sort of relative analysis assessment on that,” Kirby replied. “You’ve heard [Secretary of State Antony Blinken] talk about the climate as a a real, an existential national security threat, and it is — not just to the United States, but to countries all over the world. And we consider China as the number one pacing challenge for the Department. Both are equally important.”

The remarks came on the heels of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, which Blinken attended along with President Joe Biden. Blinken emphasized in an interview at the summit that the administration was seeking to end funding for coal projects around the globe, calling coal “one of the biggest drivers of emissions around the world.”

Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said after the summit that the U.S. had agreed to a “Declaration for Enhanced climate Action in the 2020s,” though few details were immediately available.

Watch above via the Defense Department.

Editor’s note: This post originally referred to Kirby as the State Department spokesperson. He is the Defense Department spokesperson. Mediaite regrets the error.

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