Joe Biden, Green Energy, and the Great Labor Realignment
Democrats can’t serve both climate-change activists and the working class. That’s an opening for the GOP.
by Jordan McGillis
February 25, 2021, 11:22 PM
An awkward conflict in Washington reveals both the tectonic shifts remaking American politics and Joe Biden’s Achilles’ heel. Biden has tabbed climate change as one of the “four interrelated existential crises†facing America today and has released a barrage of energy orders aimed at slowing it. Most visibly, he has halted fossil fuel leasing on federal lands and axed the Keystone XL pipeline, immediately sending thousands of workers into unemployment. In so doing, Biden has alienated a core Democratic Party constituency: labor.
Despite these obvious harms, the Biden administration has emphasized that it believes the energy transition it is imposing can be blue collar–friendly. In fact, the administration claims their plan will generate union jobs.
But labor isn’t buying it. And rightfully not. Green jobs pay less. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wind turbine technicians and solar panel installers earn $30,000 to $40,000 less per year than power plant operators. It’s a discrepancy that prompted Terry O’Sullivan, general president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, to remark, “It’s pie-in-the-sky b***s**t about these green jobs being good middle-class jobs, because they’re not.â€
https://spectator.org/joe-biden-green-energy-labor/?utm_source=LibertyNation
