We know that Climate Envoy John Kerry lost a presidential bid, but he seems not to have the slightest notion of what it will be like for less exalted folks to find another position when the government eliminates their more ordinary jobs by executive fiat.

La de da—get another job, is Kerry’s attitude. Does he have any idea of what it is like to find work in the non-schmoozing professions?

John Kerry’s attitude towards those who have lost their jobs, or soon will, because of the Biden administration policies is dismissive.

President Biden signed an executive order Wednesday that puts climate “at the center” of U.S. policy, domestic and foreign, and will cost many Americans their jobs (in a job-destroying pandemic, no less).

President Biden moved quickly to shut down the XL Keystone Pipeline by executive order. It was expected to keep 11,000 Americans employed in 2021 and create $1.6 billion in gross wages. That’s an immediate loss, and there will be more to come.

A welding foreman named Neal Crabtree has already been laid off because of the shutdown of the Pipeline (the Obama administration played footsie with the Keystone XL, always ordering up another environment study to stall; the Biden administrations means business, or, not business, if you are Ned Crabtree).

You won’t be surprised to find that Crabtree doesn’t think the swell folks in Washington care what happens to people like him:

“I think they’re hearing us but they just don’t care. They promised their voters they were going to do one thing and they seem hell-bent on doing it,” Crabtree said.

There, there, says John Kerry:

New U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Wednesday that coal workers and those in other fossil fuel industries have been fed a “false narrative” that climate policies kill their jobs.

“Unfortunately workers have been fed a false narrative, no surprise, over the last few years they’ve been fed the notion that somehow dealing with climate is coming at their expense, no it’s not,” Kerry said. “What’s happening to them is happening because of other market forces already taking place.”  

“That is just not true,” said the 46-year-old pipeliner. “They’re killing the jobs that are here and selling a fairy tale of jobs that aren’t,” said Crabtree who claimed these new climate policies have nothing to do with market forces but rather the smothering of an industry with plenty of natural demand.

During the press briefing, Kerry also recommended that oil and gas workers should pivot to manufacturing solar panels if their jobs are eliminated as a consequence of the Biden administration’s environmental policies.

“What President Biden wants to do is make sure those folks have better choices, that they have alternatives, that they can be the people to go to work to make the solar panels,” Kerry said.

Better choices? It might shock Kerry and other climate grandees that pipefitters and welders like their jobs and gain dignity for doing them. Says Crabtree:

“You spend a lifetime fine-tuning your skills and if you go start another job you’re starting at the bottom. I doubt that these politicians would like it if someone told them to go start over and find a different job.” . . .

With a grim outlook for the future, Crabtree admitted sleep is now hard to come by.

“I’m in the process of building a house, trying to live the American dream, and the bank might own it before I get a chance to live in it.”

I wonder if John Kerry has any idea of what it is like to look for a regular job. Here’s where a little bit of that famed Democratic Party empathy would not come amiss. But the suffering of ordinary people seems to be of little concern when devising climate policies.

Is Neal Crabtree supposed to peruse the local newspaper’s want ads listings under the “solar panels” heading? Will people have to wait until the government can subsidize new solar panel businesses (such as the failed Solyndra that didn’t live up to advance billing)? Will people have to pick up and move? Are there enough solar panel jobs to sustain those laid off by the Biden climate orders? Will there be soon? Does anybody in Washington give a damn?

The Biden administration appears to be willing to pursue only a hard left environmental policy. There are other approaches aimed at addressing climate and environmental concerns without the big government policies and destruction of people’s livelihoods favored by environment radicals.

But why bother with working people? I mean, who knows any of them anyway?

Yes, John Kerry seems to require pipefitters and other energy industry workers to sacrifice the jobs that sustain their families, but he hasn’t yet bothered to get rid of his family’s fossil-fuel guzzling private jet.  

If John Kerry thinks it’s going to be easy for pipefitters such as Neal Crabtree to get their lives back together, he’s been fed a false narrative.