President Joe Biden and his climate czar John Kerry want to reduce the carbon footprint of the United States of America.
When running for president, Biden promised that the country would work towards getting the United States to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 — when Biden would turn 108, and Kerry would turn 107.
Some critics of Biden’s energy policies, however, worry that a transition away from fossil fuels will eliminate jobs for many Americans. It also happens to relate to a question Kerry fielded at a recent press conference Wednesday, January 27, as The Daily Caller reported.
A female reporter asked Kerry about people who work in fossil fuel industries such as oil, natural gas, and coal potentially losing their jobs. She said, “What do you say to them, particularly those people who President Trump struck a chord with on the campaign trail when he promised to save their jobs? What is your message to them right now? And also to the oil industry executives who are listening, are you putting them on notice today?”
Kerry offered a lengthy response suggesting that people should look elsewhere for work.
Kerry said:
Well, we didn’t come here to put anyone on notice except to the seriousness of President Biden’s intent to do what needs to be done with this crisis, and it is a crisis. No two people are in this room are more concerned about it, and the President of the United States in every comment he has made about climate the need to grow the new jobs that pay better, that are cleaner. You know, you look at the consequences of black lung for a miner, for instance, and measure that against the fastest growing job in the United States before COVID was solar power technician.
The same people can do those jobs, but the choice of doing the solar power one now is a better choice. And similarly, you have the second fastest growing job pre-COVID was wind turbine technician. This is happening. 75 percent, 70 percent of all of the electricity that’s come online in the United States in the last few years came from renewables, not — coal plants have been closing over the last 20 years.
So what President Biden wants to do is make sure those folks have better choices, that they have alternatives. That they can be the people who go to work to make the solar panels and we’re making them here at home. That is going to be a particular focus of the build back better agenda. And I think that unfortunately, workers have been fed a false narrative, no surprise — right? — over the last few years. They’ve been fed the notion that somehow dealing with climate is coming at their expense. No, it’s not.
What’s happening to them is happening because of other market forces already taking place. And what the financiers, the big banks, the asset managers, private investors, venture capital are all discovering is there’s a lot of money to be made in the creation of these new jobs in these sectors. So whether it’s green hydrogen that’s going to come or geothermal heat, or whatever it’s going to be, those are jobs. The same worker who works in South Carolina today putting together a BMW which happens to be made there and is currently an internal combustion engine can put together a car, but it’s electric.
If the Biden administration enacts a plan to reduce carbon emissions, it’s unclear how many jobs in the new version of the U.S. economy will go to those who lose their jobs as a result those policies.
