Biden’s Fossil Fuel Ban Would Destroy 10.3 Million Jobs Across America

Democratic presidential presumptive nominee Joe Biden said the Green New Deal doesn’t go too far and that he wants to ban coal power plants and fossil fuels. If Democrats get their way and eliminate fossil fuels, they would destroy 10.3 million jobs across America including 600,000 in Pennsylvania alone. This at a time when the U.S. economy is in desperate need of recovery – not more job-killing policies.

Real Clear Politics reported the exchange last year in Detroit:

Biden’s commitment to ending Americans’ use of fossil fuels in cars, planes and rapid transit came during a clash in a with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who lambasted him for only offering “middle-ground” solutions to global warming.

Biden responded by touting sweeping aspects of his own environmental plan.

To clarify, CNN’s Dana Bash followed up: “Would there be any place for fossil fuels, including coal and fracking, in a Biden administration?”

Perhaps Biden, who has billed himself as the blue-collar anti-Trump, answered too swiftly, because Twitter lit up following this reply: “No. We would work it out. We would make sure it’s eliminated, and no more subsidies for either one of those, period.”

Biden has been consistent in his hostility to energy industry workers. In December he suggested if coal miners lose their job due to his policies they should learn to code.

Biden has also said “we should put them in jail” when talking about fossil fuel executives. He’s endorsed a carbon tax, which will force hardworking Americans to pay more in household gasoline, heating and cooling bills and also wants to eliminate fracking.  If elected, Biden’s fracking ban will devastate the economies of several battleground states, as noted by Steve Moore in the Wall Street Journal, a fracking ban would devastate Rust Belt economies:

Curtailing U.S. oil and gas production would be economically disastrous. At least $1 trillion of U.S. economic output is related to the shale revolution, and more than 1.5 million Americans are employed by the industry. A PricewaterhouseCoopers study for the American Petroleum Institute found that at least four million American jobs are tied to the shale oil and gas revolution in areas like auto production, construction, petroleum engineering, pipe fitting, service stations, steel production and trucking.

Democrats’ quest to eliminate these jobs would hurt them in the swing states they’ll need to win to unseat President Trump. Ohio and Michigan have a combined total of more than 400,000 workers in the shale industry. Pennsylvania has another 320,000. Colorado and Florida each have more than 200,000 workers in oil and gas.

Pittsburgh has become a global energy hub, and whole towns in Ohio and Pennsylvania that were once left for dead have been revitalized thanks to shale gas and related industries.

Then consider Texas. Liberals have long wanted to turn the Lone Star State blue, or at least purple. But nearly two million Texans are employed in oil and gas and related industries. Many hard-hat workers and truckers employed in the oil-rich Permian Basin earn more than $100,000 a year with overtime. How do you win in and around Houston, Dallas and Midland with a platform that opposes oil and gas?

The truth is, Biden has shown his true colors when it comes to environmental policy: he’s in favor of total government control over nearly every aspect of Americans’ lives.