This prompts a tough question: Is “make solar panels” the new “learn to code,” or the new “let them eat cake”? The correct answer is … yes. When confronted with the obvious job-killing outcomes in the American energy sector of Joe Biden’s new energy and climate-change policies, new “climate czar” John Kerry intoned that those workers will have to make “better choices” in the future.

Hey, why not learn to make solar panels? That’ll work for day-shift employees, anyway:

John Kerry is asked what his message would be to oil and gas workers who "see an end to their livelihoods":

"What President Biden wants to do is make sure that those folks have better choices… That they can be the people to go to work to make the solar panels." pic.twitter.com/i9TYXlD9Jg

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 27, 2021

What a great idea! Too bad the Kerry family private jet doesn’t run off of solar cells:

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) records indicate that the family of U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry owns a private jet, despite his position on combatting fossil fuels in the new administration.

The FAA’s registry shows a Gulfstream Aerospace jet owned by Flying Squirrel LLC, the name previously reported for Teresa Heinz-Kerry’s private charter jet company. The company’s listed address matches that of the Heinz Family Foundation.

The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment. Neither did the Heinz family office.

According to FAA records, the jet’s registration certificate was issued in July of 2005 and expires in October of 2023.

Maybe the Kerry family are the people who should “make better choices.”

The problem with Kerry’s answer, besides his usual rancid condescension, is that we had eight years of these same promises from the Obama administration. They started out their first term by diverting hundreds of billions of dollars — mainly from the $900 billion emergency stimulus package — into “green energy” development. They promised that this “investment” would generate millions of high-paying jobs in renewable energy and that it would obviate the need for fossil-fuel production. Instead, tax money went to busts like Solyndra, companies that couldn’t find investors but got subsidies from the Obama administration anyway.

The results were as predictable then as they are now. Eight years later, gas prices were soaring and the green-energy revolution was nowhere to be seen. Administration officials from Obama on down insisted we couldn’t drill our way out of the energy crunch. Four years after that, the US has become a net energy exporter thanks to investments in expanded oil and gas drilling, prices are low, and supplies are reliable and stable. Those are precisely the conditions needed for an economic recovery — and yet, once again in an economic crisis, a Democratic administration will instead shut down US production and “invest” in speculative technology. And most of that will require us to rely on foreign resources, as the same Democrats will balk at the kind of mining operations required to produce rare-earth minerals necessary for these technology platforms.

It’s bad enough getting a rerun on failure and dependence. Having a stentorian hypocrite like John Kerry fronting it for the rerun should be a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s bar on cruel and unusual punishment.