White House Launches American Climate Corps

What's the story?

• On Wednesday, the Biden Administration unveiled the American Climate Corps, a New Deal-style program that will act as a major green jobs training project. 
• The White House announced that the program will employ 20,000 young adults to learn how to work in wind and solar production, disaster preparedness, land conservation, and more environmental focuses. 
• The initiative is modeled after President Franklin D Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps, created in the 1930s as part of the New Deal.

The program details

• The program will pay participants and entails many positions that won't require previous experience. Many organizations will participate in the building of the corps, including the Labor, Interior, Agriculture, and Energy Departments, AmeriCorps, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. 
• The idea began with progressive environmental groups, like the youth-led Sunrise Movement. During Biden's first week of office, he issued an executive order calling for the establishment of a "civilian climate corps."
• According to Ali Zaidi, the White House national climate adviser, a recruitment website will be up and running within the next few months. 

What they're saying

• In recent weeks, Democrats and environmental advocates have been pushing Biden to issue an executive order authorizing the American Climate Corps. 50 members of Congress wrote a letter to Biden this week, saying:

"With deadly heat, dangerous floods, rising seas, and devastating wildfires — including those that ravaged Maui last month — the climate crisis demands a whole-of-government response at an unprecedented scale."

• The lawmakers continued, saying the federal climate corps would:

"...prepare a whole generation of workers for good-paying union jobs in the clean economy…fight climate change, build community resilience and support environmental justice."

• When announcing the program, Zaidi said:

"We're opening up pathways to good-paying careers, lifetimes of being involved in the work of making our communities more fair, more sustainable, more resilient."

• Republicans have largely dismissed the Climate Corps proposal, believing it's a waste of money and would take jobs away from workers displaced by the pandemic. Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) expressed his opposition to the program in 2021, saying:

"We don't need another FDR program, and the idea that this is going to help land management is a false idea as well."

How do you feel about the American Climate Corps?

-Jamie Epstein

(Photo Credit: AmeriCorps)