The Biden administration’s climate agenda has put large numbers of oil and gas workers out of work, but on Wednesday (27), Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, told a White House news conference that laid-off workers could find “better” new jobs.
Biden’s revocation of the Keystone XL pipeline permit on his first day in office, followed by a moratorium on oil and gas leasing on federal lands, has resulted in widespread worker job losses and potentially tens of thousands of future job losses.
When asked by reporters what message they had for workers in the fossil fuel industry whose livelihoods have been ended, Kerry and National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy promised that workers could find new jobs in “green” industries, or that they could benefit from New Deal-style work programs. The New Deal-style jobs program will benefit.
“What President Biden wants is to develop new jobs that pay better and are cleaner.” They could have new jobs, such as building solar panels, Kerry said.
It’s not clear how such retraining would work or whether it would be possible for older workers who have worked in the fossil fuel industry all their lives.
Solar panels are the focus of Biden’s first attempt at “green jobs” (green jobs) under former President Barack Obama’s stimulus, an attempt that ended with the bankruptcy of Solyndra, a company that Biden and Obama both spoke highly of.
Solyndra, a California-based new energy company that produces solar cells, was founded in 2005 and was once used as a model for energy innovation, receiving more than $500 million in federal loan guarantees approved by the U.S. Department of Energy. The company went bankrupt in September 2011 and more than 1,000 employees were laid off.
Kerry also said workers at the BMW plant in South Carolina had the option of building electric engines instead of internal combustion engines.
Workers in the auto industry in much of the U.S. have faced job losses due to the relocation of auto manufacturing to foreign countries, and those workers are finding it difficult, if not impossible, to find similarly well-paying jobs again. It is unclear how Biden will address this issue.
Significantly, Kerry also admitted that climate change would not be solved even if U.S. emissions were “zero.
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