Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour explained how former Vice President Joe Biden’s proposed energy policies could potentially destroy millions of jobs in the automotive industry, offering her analysis in a Wednesday interview on the Dan Proft Show.

Mansour, born and raised in metro Detroit, MI, warned how Biden’s proposals to ban fracking as part of a broader strategy to “decarbonize the economy” could potentially destroy 160,000 energy sector jobs, decimate the auto industry, impede manufacturing operations, increase home heating expenses, and create California-style rolling blackouts in the state of Michigan.

Mansour said Biden’s proposal amounts to “basically eliminating an industry that accounts for about $1.3 trillion dollars worth of economic input into this country and an industry that accounts for about nearly seven or eight percent of our GDP. Joe Biden wants to sunset that industry.”

The fossil fuel industry supports 10.3 million jobs, produces $714 billion in labor income, and generates $1.3 trillion in economic output while accounting for 7.6 percent of U.S. GDP, according to the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and natural gas industry’s largest trade organization.

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Proft highlighted Biden’s push to end carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 2035 as an “aggressive timeline” which would amount to “a momentous metamorphosis for America.” 

Mansour emphasized the centrality of natural gas to America’s infrastructure, particularly home heating needs.

“It has huge implications for Michigan,” Mansour said of Biden’s intention. “It really does have implications for every single state, because every state is part of the energy infrastructure, and natural gas is hugely important to every state. It’s been a huge benefit to the economy. Same thing with the oil industry.”

Mansour, who now lives in Los Angeles, CA, reflected on electricity shortages across California caused by the Golden State’s renewable energy policies that rely heavily on wind and solar power. Mansour said:

I experienced this in California — what the implication of [Biden’s] policies are –because California has adopted similar green goals to transition to zero emissions and full renewable energy by 2035, and what we see in our state here is perennial rolling blackouts, because wind and solar are not reliable sources of energy.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) admitted in August that California’s left-wing energy policies had failed to provide sufficient electricity for the state. He said the Golden State needed “backup” and “insurance” from other power sources.

Mansour contrasted the storability of fossil fuel energy sources with that of wind and solar alternatives, noting that California experienced rolling blackouts last summer “because there was a cloud cover in the desert, so the solar panels didn’t work, and there was no wind for a period, and that just shows you exactly what the problem is,” Mansour explained.

Mansour continued, “Industry experts refer to it as ‘dispatchability.’ When you have something like natural gas, it’s dispatchable. You can store it in the summer months and have it available … in the winter months. That’s hugely important for a state like Michigan.”

Insufficient electricity in northern states with cold winters would result in freezing homes, Mansour warned. She added:

Seventy-five percent of the homes in Michigan are heated by natural gas. Same thing in Illinois [and] in many of the states across this country. So in a state like California, when you have rolling blackouts, it’s uncomfortable [because] we can’t use our air conditioning, but it’s going to be catastrophic for a state that has polar vortexes and you need to heat your home, especially for states like Michigan.

America’s manufacturing industries depend on reliable energy, Mansour added.

“The cornerstone of a thriving manufacturing sector is access to affordable and reliable energy,” Mansour stated. “What Joe Biden is doing, essentially, is taking our reliable fossil fuel based-energy infrastructure and transitioning it to something that’s totally unreliable, unproven, and vulnerable to rolling blackouts.” She went on to say:

Here’s the kicker: Part of Joe Biden’s energy policies is also a push for zero-emission vehicles. By that he means electric vehicles, and guess what? You have to charge those vehicles. You have to plug them in some place, and you’re going to be plugging them into our still fossil fuel-burning power grid. So essentially you get zero [environmental] benefit from all of this. It’s just trading for a longer tailpipe.

A rapid government-led push to eliminate the internal combustion engine “would mean wiping out millions of jobs all along the supply chain for our automotive industry,” Mansour said.

Proft noted that the production of lithium-ion batteries can emit 74 percent more carbon dioxide than conventional engines, drawing from a Bloomberg analysis titled, “Lithium Batteries’ Dirty Secret: Manufacturing Them Leaves Massive Carbon Footprint.”

Proft determined, “It’s just a scam, too, it’s just sort of feeling your way to energy policy rather than looking at the hard data and the hard science behind it [and] the hard economic impact.”

Mansour replied, “Seven million Americans are employed in the automotive industry in various capacities. This push towards [electric vehicles] has no real environmental benefit when you look at how you’re going to have to charge these things, how you have to mine for the materials needed to make these batteries, and we have no way yet to really effectively recycle these batteries.”

Mansour went on, “Are we going to have massive landfills? We can’t even safely do that. It’s all just smoke and mirrors.” She added:

The reason why the auto industry is embracing electric vehicles has nothing to do with the environment. It has everything to do with their bottom line, because guess what? It’s cheaper to make these vehicles for the automakers if you wipe out all of those components that create the internal combustion engine. The sticker price of these vehicles is not any cheaper for the consumers. In fact, it’s more expensive.

Mansour concluded, “It’s a cash cow for the auto industry [and] automakers, but not necessarily for the workers, not necessarily for American consumers who don’t like or don’t trust these vehicles. It’s not even good for the environment.”

China would be a geopolitical beneficiary of Democrats’ “green energy” proposals, Mansour observed. “China loves electric vehicles because they don’t have our oil reserves,” she said. “They are totally embracing this.”

In 2019, the U.S. became the global leader in petroleum and natural gas production.

In an article on this topic for Breitbart News, Mansour noted:

A Biden-led administration’s rapid push towards an all-electric future would rob U.S. auto workers of the advantage of experience and U.S. auto plants of the advantage of previously built manufacturing capacity. Biden’s rapid push towards EV would tempt American automakers to train workers in China and invest in new plants there — a temptation that will likely be fostered by almost unlimited state subsidies from the Chinese regime and one-way trade barriers that will make it easier to sell cars in the U.S. and China if they are made in China.

Given time and a Trump administration’s protections of U.S. manufacturing, U.S. automakers could be incentivized to train American workers to build EVs and to invest in U.S. capacity. Rushed and without tariffs, most of this will likely end up in China — just like all the rest of American manufacturing thanks to decades of failed trade policies like Joe Biden’s.

The Dan Proft Show airs nationwide on weeknights between 9:00 p.m. and midnight Eastern on the Salem Radio Network.