For Democrats like John Kerry, no sacrifice is too great for the greater good — as long as it’s someone else doing the sacrificing.
The former secretary of state, U.S. senator, one-time Democratic presidential candidate and current Biden administration climate czar makes a pretense with the rest of his party of caring for the commoners in American life.
But in an interview from Glasgow, Scotland, this week, he made it clear that the policies of the White House he now serves are dead set on directly killing an industry that employs more than 40,000 of his fellow citizens.
“By 2030 in the United States, we won’t have coal,” Kerry said in an interview Tuesday, according to Bloomberg News. “We will not have coal plants.”
Kerry was speaking at COP26, one of those periodic multinational gatherings where the good and the great gather together to display their hypocrisy on the world stage while talking about ways to battle the boogeyman of “climate change,” usually on the backs of those far less fortunate.
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In the Kerry case, those less fortunate include the tens of thousands of Americans whose livelihoods are directly connected to the coal industry liberals loathe (42,000 jobs in the U.S., according to the data company Statista). And that doesn’t even count their families, communities and businesses that rely on them.
That’s the Biden administration’s brand of “leadership” — part of a plan to reduce carbon emissions to zero in the next 14 years.
“We’re saying we are going to be carbon free in the power sector by 2035,” Kerry said. “I think that’s leadership. I think that’s indicative of what we can do.”
And if that means destroying jobs and the source of nearly one-fifth of the country’s current energy supply, then that’s the price Kerry & Co. are willing to pay.
Do you think the U.S. coal industry will be around longer than John Kerry?
But it’s not a plan that’s likely to sit well with lawmakers who represent major coal-producing areas — like, say, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a guy who, with Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, basically holds the Biden administration’s future in his hands.
Manchin’s state, which went for Donald Trump by overwhelming margins in both 2016 and 2020, has about a quarter of the jobs that would be lost if coal disappeared, according to Statista.
In an interview with Newsmax, another U.S. lawmaker, Rep. James Comer, an outspoken Republican whose district includes coal-rich areas of Kentucky, said the plan is self-defeating for an administration that is also hellbent on getting rid of natural gas, oil and the internal combustion engine.
Electricity, he told Newsmax in an interview on Wednesday, has to come from somewhere.
“This is another bad policy being talked about by the Biden administration,” he said.
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US Climate Envoy John Kerry says the US ‘won’t have coal’ by 2030.
“This is another bad policy being talked about by the Biden administration,” said @RepJamesComer on Wednesday’s “National Report.” pic.twitter.com/x0wVX2TSpb
— Newsmax (@newsmax) November 10, 2021
Even in the liberal cesspool of social media, plenty of Twitter users agreed with him.
Kerry, in this one statement, proves himself completely unable to handle his position. Without coal, a lot of America loses electricity, especially with natural gas usage hindered by Biden’s policies.
— Scott Michaels (@scottbmichaels) November 10, 2021
John Kerry and his socialist co-conspirators do not care if the vast majority of Americans are forced into abject poverty.
The ruling class will have wealth and power beyond their wildest dreams. That is all they care about. Kerry is a Clown!#DemsAreEvil #SocialismSucks #FJB
— Scott Cook (@ScottCookOCMD) November 10, 2021
Senator Manchin are you listening to this crap?
— Patrick Corcoran (@hawkeyejoe601) November 10, 2021
Will Senator Manchin allow progressives to economically devastate his voters?
— David (@David77456769) November 10, 2021
But this one put it the best:
Better to not have Democrats
— Mary C (@emptynestegg) November 10, 2021
No energy source will ever come without costs and environmental tradeoffs. That’s part of life on earth.
But coal provides stable power, is in American hands and employees tens of thousands of jobs for the kind of workers liberals used to pretend to care about.
Democrats, on the other hand, provide little to the country besides duplicitous politics, social unrest and an ever more-grasping-hand of an ever-more-powerful state. Certainly, real jobs — the kind that don’t involve working for the government, for instance — aren’t high on the agenda. (President Joe Biden opened his administration by killing the Keystone XL pipeline, remember, at the cost of about 11,000 jobs. Democrats didn’t give much of a damn.)
The United States could cheerfully do without the likes of John Kerry and his hypocritical “climate change” hype by the year 2035, along with the rest of his socialist power-hungry party — much more so than it could do without coal and the electricity and jobs it provides.
In fact, it would be really no sacrifice at all.