President Biden’s climate adviser, Gina McCarthy, said on Wednesday that the government “is not asking for sacrifices” with its executive order to complete construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
According to the Keystone XL website, the project, initially proposed more than a decade ago, would have sustained about 11,000 jobs in the US in 2021 – including 8,000 union jobs – and generated $ 1.6 billion in gross wages.
“The most exciting thing about this is that we are not asking for sacrifices here,” said during an interview on Wednesday on NBC’s “TODAY Show”. “The president fully understands that people are suffering now. So, all of this about recovering from the COVID crisis. All about building good, clean jobs, jobs where you can access jobs, good wages and unions.”
The nominee for National Climate Adviser, Gina McCarthy, speaks at the Queen Theater on December 19, 2020 in Wilmington, DE. (Photo by Joshua Roberts / Getty Images)
She continued: “It is about investing in the infrastructure we need to build that future that will lead us to clean electricity and reach net zero in 2050. These are promises that he made and will keep.”
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McCarthy called climate change “one of the biggest threats in our lives”, adding that the issue needs to be addressed by “the power of the entire federal government” and through the government’s commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement.
Biden’s $ 2 trillion clean energy infrastructure plan, with its goal of achieving zero net emissions by 2050 at the most, aims to “create millions of well-paying jobs that provide workers with the option of joining a union and collectively negotiate with your employers, “according to your website.
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Gina Raimondo, appointed Biden to be secretary of commerce, said during a confirmation hearing on Tuesday before the Senate that the Biden government will ensure that union workers who lost jobs due to the blocking of the XL pipeline have new jobs.
Rhode Island Governor Gina M. Raimondo speaks at an afternoon news conference at the Vets Memorial Auditorium in Providence, RI on December 3, 2020. (Photo by Jonathan Wiggs / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
“We’ll make you work,” said Raimondo in response to a question from Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas. “I would say that climate change is a threat to all of us and that we will ensure that you have jobs, that you have the skills necessary to have a job and, by the way, as we meet the needs of climate change, there will be many jobs created, jobs well paid, unionized jobs. “
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Raimondo added that if she is chosen as Biden’s secretary of commerce, she “will fight every day for every American to have a decent-paying job and a chance to compete.”
Some tankers have already criticized the government’s decision to revoke the license for the XL pipeline as a job killer.
Neal Crabtree, a welding foreman who started working on pipeline construction as an apprentice in 1997, was dismayed when he heard the news.
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A member of Pipeliners Local Union 798, one of four unions whose members will be out of work due to the pipeline’s cancellation, the 46-year-old welder from Arkansas was one of the first to be fired after the order. By the time the cross-border licenses for the pipeline were terminated, he and his team were in Nebraska working on a pumping station for Keystone XL.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Crabtree wrote that he felt “a sick feeling in his stomach and a pain in his heart” and admitted that he collapsed and cried in his truck after firing his team.
“Like the rest of the country, COVID hurt us a lot. We had a lot of projects canceled,” Crabtree said in an interview with Fox News. “We have guys who haven’t worked in months and, in some cases, years, and having a project of this magnitude canceled will hurt many people, many families, many communities.”
Teny Sahakian and Ronn Blitzer of Fox News contributed to this report.