WASHINGTON (AP) — After being thwarted by Congress, President Joe Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps that will serve as a major green jobs training program.
After being thwarted by Congress, President Joe Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps that will serve as a major green jobs training program.
In an announcement Wednesday, the White House said the program will employ more than 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires.
The climate corps had been proposed in early versions of the sweeping climate law approved last year but was jettisoned amid strong opposition from Republicans and concerns about cost.
Democrats and environmental advocacy groups never gave up on the plan and pushed Biden in recent weeks to issue an executive order authorizing what the White House now calls the American Climate Corps.
“After years of demonstrating and fighting for a Climate Corps, we turned a generational rallying cry into a real jobs program that will put a new generation to work stopping the climate crisis,» said Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, an environmental group that has led the push for a climate corps.
With the new corps “and the historic climate investments won by our broader movement, the path towards a Green New Deal is beginning to become visible,» Prakash said, referring to a comprehensive jobs-and-climate plan supported by many activists and some Democrats but ridiculed by Republicans as a socialist nightmare that would raise taxes and hamper the economy.
Prakash, a frequent Biden critic, participated in a White House call on Tuesday promoting the new job corps, which comes as Biden tries to strengthen his appeal to young voters in the 2024 presidential campaign. The Sunrise Movement and other climate activists, including many young adults, were outraged this spring after Biden approved the huge Willow oil-drilling project in Alaska.
