Will the “green transition” create jobs? Yes, and some of them will even be in the U.S. China is not going to get them all. For example, the plants being built in the electric-vehicle “battery belt” will be hiring plenty of people. Whether this transition creates jobs on a net basis is an entirely different matter. Decarbonization is going to cost jobs too (and that’s before considering the slowing effect that it is likely to have on overall economic activity). Whether it creates more jobs than it costs in each country in which the transition is taking place is a different question. And will those new jobs pay as well as those that they are replacing?
Count me pessimistic.
Meanwhile (via the Wall Street Journal) (my emphasis added):
Sacramento’s crusade to banish fossil fuels isn’t merely destroying jobs in California. It’s harming workers in other states too. On Thursday Chrysler parent Stellantis warned 3,600 auto workers in the Midwest that they could lose their jobs owing to California’s electric-vehicle mandate.
Stellantis said it plans to cut a shift at a Jeep plant in Detroit and adjust production at another in Toledo, Ohio, citing “the need to manage sales of the vehicles they produce to comply with California emissions regulations.” The changes, the auto maker added, would provide flexibility in the event “regulations or marketplace allows for an increase in volume” of gas-powered cars.
Translation: The jobs of thousands of workers hinge on California’s EV mandate. The problem isn’t merely that Stellantis and other auto makers are having to shave costs to pump more money into the government-mandated EV transition. California’s EV mandate is also forcing auto makers to reduce production of gas-powered cars to meet government quotas.
Essentially, if an auto manufacturer cannot sell enough electric vehicles (EVs), it will have to sell fewer traditional cars in order to meet its quota, something, of course, that will hit its profits and (presumably) create a shortage of the type of cars that consumers actually want to buy. Such is the madness of central planning, and it is a real possibility that this shambles is something that we can expect in the relatively near future, given the failure of consumers to buy EVs at the pace that was expected of them.
The Wall Street Journal:
The layoffs are a portent of what’s to come as the Biden Administration’s back-door EV mandate ramps up, requiring EVs to make up two-thirds of all sales by 2032. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares last week compared the EV transition to a Darwinian struggle and warned that some auto makers might not survive. The Darwin analogy is colorful but isn’t quite right because this struggle isn’t about natural selection. It’s the result of government selection, and workers will be among the casualties.
And consumer choice will be another.
And among those hit hardest will be poorer drivers unable to afford EVs and unable to afford the price of used traditional cars, which are likely to be pushed up thanks to the artificially created shortage in new traditional cars.
And the net effect of all this is that some drivers will be forced off the road.
To climate fundamentalists busy fighting the war against cars, that will, of course, be a win.