Biden Unveils Environmental Justice Climate Corps, Wingnuts Slow To Freak Out
You'd think there'd be more panic, but the Right is kind of busy just now.
It’s been a bit over a year since Joe Biden launched one of his favorite parts of his climate agenda, the “American Climate Corps,” a jobs training program with roots in the New Deal, aimed at preparing young Americans for clean energy and climate resilience careers of the future, which keeps reminding us that it’s already here. (Hope you folks in Florida stay safe and dry!)
Oh, yes, and there were also the predictable freakouts about Biden forming a 20,000-member “Climate Army” that would somehow be very dangerous, although so far, no Americans have been forced at gunpoint to surrender their gas stoves or cheeseburgers.
Not even Fox News could muster too much fake outrage, grumbling instead that the Climate Corps would be a “massive govt work program to fight global warming” and deploying Tactical Scare Quotes to mock all that wasteful woke spending: “Biden's climate corps will hire a 'diverse generation' of 20,000 Americans to 'tackle climate change'; no work experience required.” Apparently it was supposed to be outrageous that a jobs training program didn’t require young people to already have work experience in a field where they’d, um, gain that work experience. Also, haha, “tackle climate change,” as if that were even a thing.
As part of Climate Week in New York Wednesday, the administration marked the first year of the Climate Corps, announcing that “more than 15,000 young Americans have been put to work in high-quality, good-paying clean energy and climate resilience workforce training and service opportunities” through the program. Climate Corps members are out there “restoring coastal ecosystems, strengthening urban and rural agriculture, investing in clean energy and energy efficiency, improving disaster and wildfire preparedness, and more.
Nothing about bursting into people’s homes and adjusting their thermostats, or else, but that’s probably just a given.
In addition, the EPA and AmeriCorps — remember Obama’s Marxist civilian army? Nobody does! — announced they’ll partner to launch a new “Environmental Justice Climate Corps,” which will recruit Climate Corps members from low-income communities that have been affected by pollution. The new Corps will enroll more than 250 AmeriCorps members, who’ll serve for a year and get a living allowance, as well as help with housing (no, not in luxe hotels). They’ll be doing hands-on work “helping organizations in disadvantaged and other low-income communities access federal resources to carry out locally driven projects to reduce pollution, increase community climate resilience, improve public health and safety, and build community capacity to address environmental justice and climate challenges.”
They’ll also be “providing technical assistance” to groups that are seeking federal funding and helping communities “invest new funds into community-based projects.” That means they aren’t so much going to be green brownshirts, but something far more terrifying to Republicans: they’ll be from the government, and they’ll be there to help (with your grant application for flood prevention or insulating homes or whatever).
Despite the presence of scary words like “environmental” and “justice” and “climate” in the name of the program, this latest initiative doesn’t appear to have gotten any outrage traction in the wingnuttosphere, apart from blue-checkmark idiots tweeting “DEI?” in reply to any Democrats who mention it. Fox News couldn’t be bothered to call it tyranny, and as far as we could tell, the only rightwing outlet to even mention the new program was the Daily Caller, which at least managed a perfunctory sneer about how “environmental justice” really translates to “the combination of left-wing social justice ideology and environmentalism.”
Otherwise, it looks like the rightwing rage machine is mostly preoccupied with the election, and of course with endless racism aimed at immigrants. We won’t mind if this one flies under their shit-flinging radar, honestly.
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My dad was in the original Civilian Conservation Corps and would proudly point out the work he personally did in some of the National Forest Campgrounds as we camped all across the west. He sent the money to his family.
https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/civilian-conservation-corps
Well, I'm about to sign off and pay a deposit to get solar panels added to my garage (already have them on the house); add an EV charger in the garage; add a battery backup system with automatic-disconnect transfer switch; and have a much larger main panel and 220V outlets installed for dryer, range, furnace, and water heater installed.
All my major appliances are currently gas. It's a lot of money, but I've had a couple really good years in business, catering to the vanity of Fortune 500 executives. When I have to replace the appliances, I'll have to go electric, so I'll need the outlets (which have never been installed in my house built in 1922). And the main service panel is already too small, with the way we've gradually added electrical needs over the past 10 decades.
I don't see the grid becoming more reliable anytime soon. I don't plan to become an energy tycoon, but might as well convert the cash into infrastructure now while I have it, so when push does come to shove I'm set up.