Biden Confirms He'll Sacrifice Thousands of Blue-Collar Jobs for Greener Economy if Needed
It’s no secret that some on the left care nothing about the actual workers who serve as the cogs in America’s incredible economy and wouldn’t think twice about doing away with their particular jobs in pursuit of a broader ideological agenda.
For proof, one need only look at New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ludicrous “Green New Deal” plan — and all of her leftist comrades who’ve called for similar radical action.
The proposal would upend and destroy the U.S. economy in the name of radical environmentalism and consolidated government power over a continued reliance upon the fossil fuels that currently drive industry.
Now, former Vice President Joe Biden’s name can be added to that list, as he admitted during Thursday night’s Democratic presidential debate that he would willingly “sacrifice” potentially “hundreds of thousands” of blue-collar jobs in order to achieve a “greener” economy.
Politico reporter and debate moderator Tim Alberta prefaced his question to Biden, saying, “Three consecutive American presidents have enjoyed stints of explosive economic growth due to a boom in oil and natural gas production.”
He then asked: “As president, would you be willing to sacrifice some of that growth, even knowing potentially that it could displace thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers in the interest of transitioning to that greener economy?”
Without even a second of hesitation, Biden replied, “The answer is yes.”
The front-running candidate quickly added that his answer was “yes” because “the opportunity for those workers to transition to high-paying jobs … is real.”
Biden added: “We’re the only country in the world that’s ever taken great, great crises and turned them into enormous opportunities.”
“We should, in fact, be making sure right now that every new building built is energy-contained, that it doesn’t leak energy, that in fact, we should be providing tax credits for people to be able to make their homes turn to solar power.”
“Where, there’s all kinds of folks out here, right here in California, we’re now on the verge of having batteries that are about the size of the top of this podium that you can store energy when in fact the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. We have enormous opportunities,” he added.
Biden suggested those who’d lost their jobs and homes could be relocated, and then shifted seamlessly into calling for the standards by which various things are built and rebuilt — such as homes and roads — to be changed.
“For example, we shouldn’t build another new highway in America that doesn’t have charging stations on it,” he said. “We have an opportunity to put 550,000 charging stations, so that we own the electrical vehicle market, creating millions of jobs for people installing them, as well making sure that we own the electric vehicle market.”
“There’s so many things we can do and we have to make sure we explain it to those people who are displaced that their skills are going to be needed for the new opportunities,” the former vice president concluded.
Joe Gierut, communications director for the America Rising Political Action Committee, noted on Twitter that Biden’s response to that question was reminiscent of failed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s 2016 blunder about killing the coal industry and putting thousands of miners out of work.
Clinton, while speaking about the “economic opportunity” provided by “clean, renewable energy,” had said during a town hall event that “we’re gonna put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
To be sure, there will likely come a day in the future when fossil fuels are potentially near depletion and the economy will be far more reliant upon alternative means of energy.
But those days are most likely still far in the future, and the development and pace of implementation of those alternative means of energy production — which at this point are nowhere near capable of meeting our current energy needs — are best left to the experts and energy producers themselves.
The problem with folks on the left like AOC, Clinton and now Biden is that they are attempting to force the transition immediately, well before we are ready or it is necessary.
This would indeed put hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of workers in all sorts of businesses and industries out of work — all in an effort to chase an unattainable dream.
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