Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel warned on Saturday that 2020 Democratic candidates’ climate proposals could cause the loss of millions of jobs.
“When you talk about banning fracking. When you talk about a carbon-free economy by 2030 or 2050, you are saying ‘we are going to kill every coal job in the country, every oil and gas job, all of the shipping jobs that they do — we’re talking about millions of positions,” Strassel said during the “The Journal Editorial Report.”
“That is not a vote-getter out at the polls,” she said. Strassel speculated that progressives, upset with the Democratic establishment after the 2016 election, were flexing their muscles with their highly ambitious proposals and sought to have one of their candidates get the party’s nomination in 2020.
“The problem here … is that this was one of the reasons they did lose last time,” she said. “Remember, [former Democratic presidential nominee] Hillary Clinton still says one of the bigger mistakes she made was promising to put a lot of coal workers out of a job.”
Strassel’s comments came days after a CNN town hall in which Democratic presidential hopefuls offered their visions for addressing climate change. As Strassel noted, Democrats have pushed a variety of plans, including banning fracking and dramatically decarbonizing the economy. – READ MORE