In a dual pair of fact checks last week, both the Associated Press and the Washington Post alerted readers that, when it comes to Biden’s climate change agenda, he’s making job promises that he can’t possibly live up to.
In the midst of signing a slate of executive orders aimed at “greening” the country on Wednesday, the new president claimed that new electric vehicles would open up “1 million new jobs in the American automobile industry.” According to his administration, this can be accomplished by getting rid of the current federal fleet and replacing 650,000 cars and trucks with their electric counterparts. The administration will also create incentives and regulations that will supposedly get the U.S. transportation infrastructure to the point where it can support all these new electric vehicles.
The AP, however, said this outlook was a bit too rosy.
“There’s plenty of skepticism about this claim. At least some of those new auto-related jobs would come at the expense of current ones. Auto industry analysts don’t see how a net gain of 1 million jobs in that sector can come from Biden’s plan,” the AP reported. “One million new jobs in the auto industry is a highly ambitious goal that would mean more than doubling the number of workers now employed in motor vehicle and parts manufacturing. Many analysts and the United Auto Workers union, in fact, have warned that electric vehicle manufacturing probably will mean fewer net auto-making jobs.”
Oops!
At the Washington Post, the resident fact-checkers took issue with a speech Climate Czar John Kerry gave on Wednesday, where he assured the press that any jobs lost in the fossil fuel industry would be quickly replaced with jobs in the emerging green energy industry.
“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,” Kerry said. “The same people can do those jobs, but the choice of doing the solar power one now is a better choice. Similarly, you have the second fastest growing job pre-COVID was wind turbine technician.”
The Post, however, said, “For the purposes of this fact check, we’re more interested in how many jobs are represented by those percentages. After all, at the White House, Kerry mentioned these statistics in the context of coal mining jobs — ‘The same people can do those jobs’ — which before the pandemic amounted to about 50,000 jobs (and about 30,000 below surface). Could these solar and wind jobs match that number?
“In sum, no,” the Post continued. “Wind turbine jobs are projected to go up by 4,300, from 7,000 to 11,300 in 10 years. The solar installer jobs are projected to go up 6,100, from 12,000 to 18,100. That’s a total increase of just 10,400 jobs — leaving 20,000 coal workers still toiling in the mines.”
That is, of course, only specifically addressing what Kerry said about coal miners. It doesn’t even get into the thousands and thousands of jobs that will be lost in other areas of the coal, gas, and oil industry. There aren’t (and won’t be) enough wind turbines on the planet to replace all of those jobs, and the Biden administration damn well knows it.
If Biden doesn’t slow his roll, he’s going to guide this country right into an age of darkness – both figuratively and literally.
