Thanks as always to The Other McCain, Bacon Time and Pirate’s Cove for the Rule Five links!
So far (and I use that qualifier very deliberately) President Biden’s biggest fuck-up has been in energy policy, specifically, cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline and backing off on drilling leases on Imperial land. That is already having bad consequences for a lot of (formerly) well-paid union workers. Excerpt:
The shale revolution transformed our country into a net exporter of oil and gas, propelled us into energy independence, and is responsible for creating 2.8 million new jobs.
The average salary of oil and natural gas workers is approximately $112,000, more than double the national private-sector average of $51,000. But oil and gas workers don’t just make double that of the national average. They make double that of wind and solar workers.
According to data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2019 a worker installing solar panels made an average of a little more than $21 an hour. Workers in oil and gas extraction made more than twice as much, at an average of over $42 an hour.
In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Energy released a report that highlighted the important economic impact of the oil and gas industry. It referenced a finding from the Economic Policy Institute that “the oil and gas extraction industry has one of the highest indirect job multipliers,” in which one direct job leads to an additional 5.43 indirect jobs.
None of this is lost on America’s labor unions. Last July, the North America’s Building Trades Union issued two studies that assessed construction opportunities and job quality in the energy sector. NABTU President, Sean McGarvey, relayed the facts:
The research confirms what our members tell us: the career opportunities for renewables are nowhere near what they are in gas and oil, and domestic energy workers highly value the safety, reliable duration, and compensation of oil and gas construction jobs.
Despite all this, in some of his earliest acts after being sworn in, President Biden has begun efforts to dismantle the fossil fuel industry and eliminate the high-paying jobs that come with it.
This was, of course, deliberate. President Biden(‘s handlers) knew that these jobs were lost long before they propped our Weekend at Bernie’s President up to sign a stack of executive orders. And while it’s not been all that long that the Democrats presented themselves as the party for blue-collar, union workers, that day has clearly passed; if the first few days of the Biden Administration have shown us nothing else, they have shown us that. The Dems apparently are confident that their coalition of wealthy coastal (ill)liberals, urban progressives and violent street protestors can maintain their hold on power without the folks who have to shower after work, not before.
And the pipeline issue, that’s one that can’t be fixed by Congress, no matter who has control. The only real place the Imperial government has any control over the pipeline is at the spot where that pipeline crosses the Canada/U.S. border, and that is in the purview of the Executive Branch.
So, say good-bye to the U.S. as a net energy exporter; say hello to long unemployment lines in the Dakotas, in Alaska, and other energy-producing locales, not excluding Canada. Say hello also to higher gas, heating oil and natural gas prices, and by extension, higher prices on everything else. And get used to seeing Climate Change Czar John Heinz Kerry, who married into sufficient wealth to avoid the consequences of all this, continue to buzz around the globe in a private jet to lecture the schlubs on saving the planet, because “…to each according to his needs,” or some such.
What a pitiful state of affairs.
