After the climate march in New York, today President Biden announced the creation of the American Climate Corps. This announcement was immediately lauded by the Sunrise Movement. Unfortunately this is not some monumental change in policy by the Biden administration. It is a performative act designed to garner votes from the youth while not addressing the actual problem.
“I can’t speak on behalf of every single youth voter, but if President Biden continues to take bold climate action like this, I think it could go a long way. Young people need to see more policies like this from the administration in the lead-up to the election.” - Varshini Prakash, co-founder and executive director of Sunrise Movement
What exactly is the American Climate Corps?
The official website is lacking in details, but the Washington Post released an article that fills in some of the holes. It turns out this is not the restoration of the Civilian Conservation Corps that Bernie Sanders called for in the Green New Deal. It is not even close. Here is the official description of the American Climate Corps:
The American Climate Corps will put a new generation of Americans to work conserving our lands and waters, bolstering community resilience, advancing environmental justice, deploying clean energy, implementing energy efficient technologies, and tackling climate change. American Climate Corps members will gain the skills necessary to access good-paying jobs that are aligned with high-quality employment opportunities after they complete their paid training or service program.
And for comparison, here is Bernie’s plan to restore the CCC:
We will invest $171 billion in reauthorizing and expanding the CCC to provide good-paying jobs building green infrastructure, planting billions of trees and other native species, preventing flood and soil erosion, rebuilding wetlands and coral, cleaning up plastic pollution, constructing and maintaining accessible paths, trails, and fire breaks; rehabilitating and removing abandoned structures, and eradicating invasive species and flora disease; and other natural methods of carbon pollution sequestration. We must take these natural solutions seriously as an important part of our strategy to solve the climate crisis.
There is a huge difference between these two things. To expand on the Biden policy from Washington Post’s reporting:
President Biden on Wednesday announced an initiative to train more than 20,000 young people in skills crucial to combating climate change, such as installing solar panels, restoring coastal wetlands and retrofitting homes to be more energy-efficient.
The American Climate Corps is just a jobs training program for private industry. It is not a Federal jobs program. While some of these jobs might be federal, it is clear from the website that the Biden administration is looking for a public-private partnership. They go so far as to ask if people would like to learn more about hosting “members of the American Climate Corps at a project site.” To me, this reads like “I would like to exploit the youth who were trained for free by the government for my own private benefit.” This is nothing like the CCC.
The Washington Post admits that this new program will not be funded with new spending:
Democrats had proposed $30 billion in new funding for the Civilian Climate Corps that was included in the early version of the Inflation Reduction Act. In contrast, the new initiative will rely on existing funding sources, although administration officials declined to say how much money the program will receive or where these dollars will come from.
This indicates that it will be underfunded. Whereas Bernie’s Green New Deal called for $171 billion in spending on a new CCC, the American Climate Corps is going to be funded by existing sources and not even amount to the $30 billion proposed. Where the original CCC employed millions, the American Climate Corps aims for around 20,000. This is nothing when it comes to confronting the existential crisis of climate collapse.
The Biden regime is using the name American Climate Corps for an insignificant jobs training program so that organizations like Sunrise Movement can claim it is a big victory and funnel the youth back into the Democratic Party. The youth should not be fooled by this nonsense. We can’t win real climate legislation in a capitalist party. Biden is still the Nordstream pipeline bomber and no matter what he calls his jobs program, it isn’t even a smidgin of the Green New Deal.
The harsh reality of the matter is that even Bernie’s Green New Deal, which was lightyears ahead of Biden’s performative nonsense, was a reformist measure that would not go far enough in addressing climate change. The root cause of climate change is the capitalist system. Until we replace capitalism with socialism on the road to communism, the problem cannot be solved. Anyone who is cheering for a jobs training program for 20,000 people is deeply unserious when it comes to solving the climate crisis. A few more youth becoming electricians is not a solution.
While I suppose, in fairness, I should wait for the details of this to be spelled out, based on experience and a pretty good sense of who & what Biden is - including of the cynical politician, I suspect that you're quite right in that this is a performative attempt to draw some badly needed electoral support from younger folk who haven't been fooled often enough yet to recognize the con. If it were for anything more than that purpose, Biden would be announcing an end of fossil fuel subsidies, cancellation of leases and freeze in all permitting, and massive federal investment in home insulation & energy conservation retrofits, renewable-source decentralized electric generation and infrastructure, full funding of international commitments per Paris Accord & COPs, and an immediate change of direction in the provocations of Russia and China , cuts in war- and war-preparation spending, etc.
Very timely and impressive critique of the situation we are in. Thank you Birrion for the clarity.