President Biden’s top climate officials on Wednesday sought to assure that their actions targeting fossil fuel production in order to combat climate change won’t lead to a massive displacement of jobs.
“What President Biden wants to do is make sure those folks have better choices, that they have alternatives,” Biden’s international climate envoy John Kerry said of fossil fuel workers. “They can be the people who go to work to build the solar panels, making them here at home.”
Coal has been losing out to cleaner, cheaper fuels in recent years, Kerry noted, adding that jobs installing solar panels and wind turbines were among the fastest-growing before the coronavirus pandemic slowed that momentum.
“Unfortunately, workers have been fed a false narrative,” Kerry said at a White House press briefing. “They have been fed the notion somehow dealing with climate is coming at their expense. No, it’s not. What’s happening to them is happening because of other market forces already taking place.”
Biden, in his early days, is looking beyond coal to also take aim at oil and gas in order to speed the transition to cleaner energy. The president signed a sweeping executive order on Wednesday afternoon that, in part, pauses new oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters, which the fossil fuel industry says could harm state budgets that earn royalties from federal drilling.
Biden’s national climate adviser, Gina McCarthy, said the order does not affect existing oil and gas leases, which can last for up to 10 years, meaning drilling can continue on federal land in the West as well as the Gulf of Mexico, which stand to be most affected.
Despite concerns the administration would also freeze permitting, the Interior Department, which oversees public lands, says the pause “won’t impact existing operations or permits for valid, existing leases, which are continuing to be reviewed and approved.”
“We want to make sure to take a little pause and review the entire strategy of what new leases ought to be approved and sold,” McCarthy said.
Biden’s executive order also establishes a number of new interagency working groups and councils aimed at helping support fossil fuel regions and prioritizing investments to minority and low-income people disproportionately affected by pollution.
“We’re going to make sure nobody is left behind,” McCarthy said. “Communities and workers as well.”
McCarthy reiterated that Biden strives to create “millions” of new jobs manufacturing clean energy technologies such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels. But, she suggested, the replacement of fossil fuels jobs won’t be one-to-one and will take time to realize.
“We’re not going to ask people to go from the middle of Ohio or Pennsylvania and ship out to the coast to have solar jobs,” she said. “We need to put people to work in their own communities. So we’re creatively looking at those opportunities for investment so that we can get people understanding that we are not trying to take away jobs.”
