(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Democratic front-runner Joe Biden admitted that he’d be willing to cut blue-collar workers’ jobs to combat climate change.
Biden was asked in the primary debate this week if he’d “be willing to sacrifice [economic] growth, even knowing potential that it could displace thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers in the interest of transitioning to that greener economy.”
And like several of the other presidential candidates on Thursday’s stage, Biden said: “The answer is yes.”
Biden said that there would still be “opportunity for those workers to transition to high-paying jobs,” even though manufacturing and oil industry jobs would be reduced under his administration’s climate-change agenda..
“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 electric vehicle market.”
And he insisted that he could still win over displaced blue-collar workers by explaining “to those people that their skills are going to be needed for the new opportunities.”
Biden’s answer resembled the one former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton gave during one of her debates with President Donald Trump. She admitted that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” but said it’s necessary to combat the greatest crisis facing the U.S.: climate change.
Some of the industries Biden wants to cut provide great-paying jobs to thousands of median workers. Oil and gas drillers paid their employees more than any other energy and utility sector in 2018, according to the Wall Street Journal, and they employ thousands of workers in important swing states the Democrats need to win in 2020.
