O’Rourke Wants To Create Jobs In Renewable Energy That ‘Do Not Replace, But Add To’ The Oil And Gas Industry

Beto O’Rourke has only been officially a candidate for Texas governor for four days, but has already made several campaign stops and raised over $2 million in his first 24 hours.

O’Rourke is focusing his campaign pitch on several topics that are popular among the voters, such as Medicaid, Marijuana and the creation of jobs in the renewable energy industry.

He has also criticized Abbott on the new abortion and carryless gun laws, as well as his handling of the Febuary winter storm that hit Texas gas and oil indutry hard. 

On Monday, in San Antonio, to counter the GOPs attacks that he would destroy the oil and gas industry, O’Rourke confirmed a Texas AFL-CIO plan, that was written by Cornell University researchers in consultation with labor unions across Texas.

The AFL-CIO plan will strike an important balance. It aims to build wind and solar farms and geothermal power plants, upgrade transmission, improve energy efficiency by reducing energy consumption in buildings, install solar panels on schools, extend broadband internet access for all Texans, expand high-speed rail, and electrify school buses.

When it comes to climate change, “we’ve got to make sure that … we’re creating the jobs that meet that challenge,” O’Rourke told reporters. “The AFL-CIO has a plan to create more than a million high-wage, high-value, high-skilled jobs right here in Texas that add to — do not replace, add to — oil and gas jobs in this state.”

On Thursday, O’Rourke spoke in Downtown Corpus Christi, focusing his attention on job creation, saying a lot of the positions would be created there.

When we’re talking about jobs, the future of Texas jobs is right here in Corpus Christi,” he said. “Of course we have oil and gas which is critically important and we want to protect those jobs. But we also have a growing renewable energy industry here,” as reported by Kris 6 News.