Editor’s Note: Froma Harrop is a syndicated columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @FromaHarrop. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers; view more opinion at CNN.
Joe Biden has a plan for addressing the crisis of climate change. One part of the plan pushes for moving America to carbon-free electricity by 2035. Another part speaks to creating new union jobs in clean energy.
Conspicuously absent from his 15-page outline is a call to totally ban fracking, as demanded by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and some environmental groups. And you know why it’s not there? Because people win national elections by promising to make jobs, not take jobs.
True hydraulic fracturing, a technique for tapping oil and gas trapped in formations of shale rock, is a dirty business. It pollutes groundwater and emits methane gas, a powerful source of planet-warming emissions. But the end product is a fossil fuel. Biden would ban new fracking oil and gas permits on public lands and waters.
What makes the calls for a total ban especially foolish is that the industry is in big trouble on its own accord. Fracking giants Chesapeake Energy and Whiting Petroleum have filed for bankruptcy. And Rystad Energy, an industry analyst, predicts that over 200 other oil and gas companies will join them by the end of 2021.
The coronavirus caused a crash in energy use, but there is also the forward march of wind and solar energy.
This year, according to the US Energy Information Administration, renewables are expected to provide 20% of America’s electricity, more than double that of 10 years ago. The fossil fuel industry is a powerful player in Washington politics, but market forces may be the ultimate decider.
On the employment front, the oilfields have already lost about 100,000 jobs since the pandemic began, according to Bloomberg. Fracking is a significant source of union jobs in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio. Working Americans are now traumatized by economic losses in the pandemic. No sane candidate would threaten jobs that are already threatened.
But Hillary Clinton did, famously, during the 2016 campaign. She came right out and said she would be putting coal companies and their workers out of business. Of course, Donald Trump ran with it. Clinton’s deeper message, that coal miners would find better jobs in communications and other tech fields, got drowned out in the politics.
According to one 2016 analysis at Brookings Institution, coal was already headed for oblivion due to automation and clean renewables beating coal on price. (And despite Trump’s pampering of the coal industry, over 1,000 coal jobs have been lost during his presidency.)
America First Action Super PAC, which supports Trump, is already on the fracking case with an ad falsely stating, “Joe Biden could cost Pennsylvania 600,000 jobs.” That number refers to a 2019 projection by the US Chamber of Commerce of how many jobs could be lost in Pennsylvania by 2025 if there is a complete ban on fracking, which Biden has said he doesn’t support doing.
For the record, the total number of Pennsylvanians employed by shale oil, pipeline and service companies combined is more like 32,000.
But climate hawks seem to think now is a good time to push Biden into a position of scaring the blue-collar workers he needs to win in November. One of the raps against Biden, if you can believe it, is working with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which is obviously concerned about union jobs. Another is that some of Barack Obama’s energy moderates are advising him.
“We will be exposing the flaws in these people’s records as climate peacocks and we will be making it toxic for Joe Biden to be taking advice on matters of energy from them,” R.L. Miller, chair of the California Democratic Party’s environmental caucus, warned. Climate activist groups Data for Progress and the Revolving Door Project have joined the pile-on.
The middle of a heated presidential race is one heck of a time to spew toxins around Biden’s campaign – assuming they want Biden to win.
Should Biden be elected, environmentalists will have ample opportunity to offer their critiques of his climate appointees and policies. But the often-cited candidates for top positions in a Biden administration – Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols – should thrill them.
Less than six months after taking office, Trump announced plans to leave the Paris accord. He’s thrown out vehicle fuel efficiency standards and regulation of carbon emissions at power plants. The activists should remind themselves that’s the alternative and stop acting as though Biden has already been elected.
Exactly what is the benefit to activists, justly alarmed by climate change, to have job losses pinned on them? There is none. Environmentalists are already the go-to scapegoat for distressed industries.
Former President Barack Obama had long argued for “green-collar” jobs. Back in June, 2016, his White House predicted that in meeting the commitments under the Paris agreement on climate change, the US would see employment in clean energy grow “from under 700,000 today to over one million jobs supported on average through 2025.”
Obama made no mention of jobs Americans might no longer have. He talked of new jobs producing electric car batteries, making homes energy efficient, building wind turbines, installing solar panels and so on. That’s exactly what Biden is doing, and fervid environmentalists should not only let him, they should applaud him loudly.