US President Joe Biden launched a new “Climate Corps” on Wednesday to help young people get green jobs, as he tries to sell voters on his plans for a clean energy economy.
“Today, we are mobilizing the next generation of clean energy, conservation, and climate resilience workers,” Biden said on X, formerly Twitter.
Biden added that the scheme would train over 20,000 young people to get “good-paying jobs” after they complete their paid training.
The US president has made the economy a key plank of his bid for reelection in 2024, particularly through his signature Inflation Reduction Act.
The ambitious climate law aims to speed the US transition to clean energy, rebuild US industry and boost social justice.
Biden, who is in New York for the UN General Assembly, warned the world body yesterday that the climate crisis poses an existential threat to “all of humanity.”
US climate activists, who have long called for the initiative, gave it a mixed reception.
One group, Evergreen, said it was a “big step toward delivering good jobs for young people in the booming clean energy economy.”
But Keanu Arpels-Josiah, an organizer of an anti-fossil fuels march in New York last Sunday, said it was “not enough.”
The Climate Corps’ name has echoes of the US Peace Corps which has sent volunteers around the world for decades.
US media said however that it was more closely modelled on a scheme during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” to get America out of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The Civilian Conservation Corps set around a quarter of a million unemployed young men to work on a huge program of projects like reforestation and dam-building.
