Biden builds a domestic green army
Who says Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has no influence? Her vision to mobilize a government Climate Corps to promote green politics is becoming a reality. President Biden wants to shrink the real Army, but his budget includes more than $8 billion for a domestic green political army.
The political model is FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, which paid Americans to work when nearly one in four were jobless. The U.S. now has a labor shortage, but the Biden Administration wants to mobilize more than 20,000 initially for the Climate Corps—and some 50,000 by 2031.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey want the Climate Corps to employ 1.5 million over five years.
“This is not summer camp for climate activists. It’s a job-training program," says Trevor Dolan of Evergreen Action, a green nonprofit that has lobbied for the Climate Corps. He says participants will learn to install electric heat pumps, solar panels, EV charger and pollution-monitoring equipment, fight forest fires, do wellness checks on the elderly during heat waves and help communities develop disaster plans, among other tasks.
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