"The president is trying to square environmentalists’ demands to stop burning fossil fuels with labor leaders’ desire for union jobs linked to oil and gas"
"During President Biden’s first formal meeting with the nation’s labor leaders, Mark McManus played the skunk at the garden party: Joking that he “drew the short straw,” the president of the pipe fitters union complained about Biden’s job-killing veto of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Biden countered that the decision should have come as no surprise to McManus’s members in the United Association; he had campaigned on a pledge to cancel the project, a potent symbol in the fight against climate change.
The two-hour meeting in the Oval Office last month was otherwise cordial. But the exchange highlighted the tension between Biden’s pledge to be “the most pro-union president in history” and his promise to environmentalists to aggressively confront global warming, which Biden has called “the existential threat of our time.”"
Juliet Eilperin and Eli Rosenberg report for the Washington Post March 7, 2021.
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