Environmentalism is the New War on the Working Class
by Joel Kotkin , Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, Published in News Week
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ohn Kerry, President Joe Biden’s new climate czar, took a private jet to accept an environmental award in Iceland in 2019. “It’s the only choice for somebody like me, who is traveling the world to win this battle,” he unironically told a reporter when asked about it. If this sounds like a clueless joke, it’s not. President Biden’s chief environmental officer took the least carbon-efficient means of travel known to man because it was “the only choice” he could think of for a member in good standing of the indulged upper classes. But this is no anomaly when it comes to liberal climate activism; it is a perfect encapsulation of what it has become: a vanity project of the jet set that directly harms working-class interests. And it’s this green agenda that directly threatens the working class that Biden has prioritized as he has taken command of the federal government. The first victims of this agenda include the upwards of 10,000 people, many of them union members, who expected to work on the now canceled Keystone XL Pipeline. But this draconian climate agenda that cost so many jobs should not have come as a surprise. As a Rasmussen Reports poll found, most Americans—52 percent— predicted that Biden’s decision to re-join the Paris Climate Agreement “will cost American jobs and force households and small business to pay higher utility bills.” Regions from the Appalachians to the Rockies could experience massive job losses, particularly if Biden embraces the green demand to ban all fracking, even on private land. In Texas alone, as many as a million good-paying jobs would be lost. Overall, according to a Chamber of Commerce report, a full national fracking ban would cost 14 million jobs, far more than the eight million lost in the Great Recession. That could turn even vital smaller towns into instant slums. And in places like New Mexico, where spending on public programs hinges on the oil industry—now experiencing a 60-day moratorium on new permits, thanks to President Biden—even issues like education will be impacted. What has happened to the party of the people? The climate story is just one part of a bigger one, which led Ohio Democrat Tim
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MARCH 2021
Ryan to complain that the party of the cratic leaders like to tout the state’s social people increasingly resembles the old justice capitalism. But its state policies have Republicans, with lockstep support from been disastrous for California’s middle and Wall Street, the celebrity circuit, Silicon working classes. State energy policies have Valley and other elite sectors like profes- made California gas and electricity prices sional service and law firms. Put simply, the among the highest in the nation, increasing Democrats have won the battle of the elites, electricity prices since 2011 five times as fast with Democratic campaign spending more as the national average. In 2017 alone, those than tripling in recent years. prices increased at three times the national These trends have led some progressives rate. These prices have been devastating to to urge the party to abandon the white poorer Californians—particularly in the hot working class and rely instead on educated interior, where “energy poverty” has millennials, minorities, professionals and grown rapidly. globally-oriented businesses as the cornerAlthough these policies have offered stones of their electoral coalition. In this subsidy catnip to dominant tech oligarchs configuration, Democrats won’t have to and the wealthy investors so prominent in worry about creating good blue-collar jobs. the state, California, whose industrial sector Compare this with former President employs the state’s diverse blue-collar Donald Trump, who won three-quarters of workforce, has fallen into the bottom half the white working-class vote, and even of states in manufacturing sector employmade significant gains with racial minori- ment growth, ranking 44th last year. Its new ties. Trump has done best with those who industrial job creation has lagged comwork with their hands—in factories, in the pared to gains from competitors such as logistics industry and in energy; these Nevada, Kentucky, Michigan and Florida. working-class voters, as a recent study by Even without adjusting for costs, no CaliforCityLab noted, repair and operate machines, nia metro area ranks in the U.S. top ten in drive trucks and operate our power grid. terms of well-paying, blue-collar jobs. And it is these people, in rural areas and Meanwhile, four—Ventura, Los Angeles, small manufacSan Jose and San turing towns, Diego—sit among the who will have bottom ten. There should be a real to pay for the California regulatory “enlightened” policies, shaped largely liberal party in this climate policies by climate concerns, that have led to have also pushed country, and I don’t mean a higher energy housing prices so high prices virtually that the state is home crackpot professional one.” ever y where to six of the nation’s – Harry Truman. they have been worst markets for firstimplemented, tim e hom ebu yer s , from Germany to Australia. A recent study according to recent AEI survey. California in Ecological Economics, for example, con- also accounts for four of the six largest cluded that green energy policy hit rural metros with the lowest homeowncommunities in Germany much harder than ership rate. cities, even though they are “on par” with Moreover, large parts of the state are big cities in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) increasingly off-limits to the working class; production. according to a recent study by economist These policies tend to hit those indus- John Husing, not one unionized constructries that depend on resource-based tion worker can now afford to buy a product. A canceled petrochemical plant in median-priced home in any coastal CaliforOhio will do no harm to Washington regu- nia county. Not one. Not only are lators or San Francisco trustifarians; it’s a construction rates lower than in other blow that will be sustained entirely by states, but even if you build it, you can look blue-collar Midwesterners. but not touch. But we don’t have to project what these None of this is to say that we should do policies will mean to working-class Ameri- nothing about climate change. But there cans. That reality is amply demonstrated in are many opportunities to address climate California, a state whose policies are widely change without destroying the working embraced by Biden and his administration class. And the California experience is not (“Make California Great Again? That’s one that should inspire true believers in Biden’s plan,” read an ecstatic account in continued on page 22 >> the Los Angeles Times). California’s Demo-
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