Biden Warned Us That His Climate Policies Would Be Job Killers

There’s an old adage in politics and in life: When people tell you who they are, believe them.

In President Biden’s case, he long telegraphed his hostility toward American energy industries and signaled that the most extreme environmentalists in his party would get exactly what they wanted from his administration.

That these policies will destroy thousands of jobs during an economic downturn clearly does not bother him and has not stopped him from inflicting massive damage as quickly as possible in his first days in office.

Sadly, we are already seeing a forming record which calls to mind Mr. Biden’s previous “leadership” as vice president when he helped oversee the slowest economic recovery since World War II.

When asked in a Democratic primary debate in December 2019 if he would be willing to sacrifice jobs to shift to a “green” energy economy, Mr. Biden emphatically said, “The answer is yes!”

His termination of the Keystone XL pipeline is a perfect example of this bowing to environmental extremists at the expense of hard-working Americans.

The instantaneous loss of 11,000 pipeline-related jobs is proof that Biden was not joking about his willingness to discard workers, many of whom are union members he promised to support.

Ironically, leftists celebrating the pipeline cancellation should beware that the joke will be on them because the crude oil will still be transported through the country by more environmentally risky means like rail.

And in ending the pipeline project, Mr. Biden stuck a finger in the eye of our good friends to the north in Canada, as the Alberta premier called the decision a “gut punch.” Clearly, Mr. Biden is an internationalist, in that he will spread the economic pain across borders.

In a move bound to make him popular in university faculty lounges and with elites in Europe, Mr. Biden is re-entering the Paris Accord, the global climate agreement that hamstrings the American economy but does little to actually solve the problem it claims to address.

The deal could cost the United States 6.5 million jobs and $3 trillion in GDP by 2040, according to a 2017 study.

It also contains no enforcement provisions and no punishments for failing to meet benchmarks, meaning the world’s worst polluters can continue to behave any way they want.

Mr. Biden’s own “climate envoy,” John Kerry, whose family owns a carbon-unfriendly private jet, admitted that 90 percent of the world’s emissions are from outside the United States and that “we could go to zero tomorrow and the problem isn’t solved.”

And what was Mr. Kerry’s best advice for the workers to be displaced by these policies? Learn to make solar panels and windmills.

While on the campaign trail, Mr. Biden made clear he planned to eliminate traditional sources of energy, but obviously recognized the political risks in doing so.

He routinely told environmental activists that he would ultimately ban fracking and “end fossil fuel,” but attempted to obfuscate when questioned — especially in key battleground states where the energy sector employs large numbers of people.

In truth, Mr. Biden’s scheme is to wipe out fossil fuel entirely in just 15 years, which would destroy 10 million jobs nationally.

And already he has imposed a moratorium on new drilling and fracking on federal lands, prompting an immediate lawsuit and grave concerns about the economies and tax revenues in many energy-producing states.

For a candidate who promised to create jobs and be the “most union-friendly” president ever, that’s a lot of working people he plans to throw off payrolls.

Perhaps all this economic carnage would be more surprising if Mr. Biden did not already carry with him a dismal record for job creation during his five decades in the federal government.

As vice president, he helped engineer an economic recovery that was “the worst in postwar American history.” Slow growth and stagnant wages are the hallmarks of Biden’s time in Washington and he appears eager to prove that his earlier efforts were no fluke.

At a time when the nation still reels from the economic pains inflicted by the global coronavirus pandemic, his first order of business has been to attack energy — the very sector that has fueled much of America’s growth over the last century.

While it is tempting to say “told you so” in response to these disastrous policies, there really is no need. Joe Biden himself told us he was going to do it.

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