In a program modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps started by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 during the Great Depression, Biden’s American Climate Corps will start in April by offering jobs installing wind and solar projects, conserving energy in homes, and perhaps wildfire mitigation. While only a few hundred jobs will be available in April, the program hopes to eventually offer up to 20,000 jobs for young people. Most of the jobs will not require experience.
Maggie Thomas, a special assistant to the president for climate change, says: “There’s an incredible demand signal from young people who we see as being put on a pathway to good-paying careers.” Saul Levin, the legislative and political director at the Green New Deal Network, says: “We’re absolutely confident that there are millions of young people who are interested in these programs.”
According to polling conducted last October, about 71 percent of voters approve of the idea, and other polling has shown that “half of likely voters under 45 would consider joining the program, given the chance.” The article says:
Given the demand, President Biden promised to triple the size of the corps in a decade at his State of the Union speech last week. His newly proposed budget calls for an $8 billion expansion of the American Climate Corps to employ an additional 50,000 corps members per year by 2031.
Some progressives have hoped the program would put 1.5 million Americans to work addressing the climate crisis, which would be half the number employed by the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps “to plant billions of trees, fight forest fires, prevent erosion, and build trails you can still hike at national parks today.”
The article quotes the director of the Green New Deal Network:
“We’ll say this again and again — hundreds [of positions] is not enough. We’re talking about a country on fire. We’re talking about people not being able to breathe the air outside. So the scale needs to be dramatically ramped up.”
The article explains:
The current version of the American Climate Corps is in many ways a compromise of Biden’s initial plans to revive that program and update it for the problems of the 21st century. The corps was initially funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate bill Biden signed in 2021. But that funding was stripped from the bill before passage. As a result, funding for the American Climate Corps had to be cobbled together from existing funding from seven agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Interior.
According to Maggie Thomas at the White House: “Once you see the impact of what the American Climate Corps will be in communities across the country, it’s going to be really hard for members of Congress to deny the incredible opportunity that exists with a program like this.” yaleclimateconnections.org/...?
