In my last two blog posts, I wrote about the urgent need for a Green New Deal, breaking down what that term means and what steps our government can take now to enact it.
On January 27, 2021, Joe Biden signed an executive order meant to tackle the climate crisis. The language includes an important section about the breadth of the order’s context: “to implement a Government-wide approach that reduces climate pollution in every sector of the economy; increases resilience to the impacts of climate change; protects public health; conserves our lands, waters, and biodiversity; delivers environmental justice; and spurs well-paying union jobs and economic growth, especially through innovation, commercialization, and deployment of clean energy technologies and infrastructure. Successfully meeting these challenges will require the Federal Government to pursue such a coordinated approach from planning to implementation, coupled with substantive engagement by stakeholders, including State, local, and Tribal governments.”
This is almost exactly what I called for in my previous posts—a big step in the right direction.
My green jobs post includes the idea of a "Green Corps"—a training and jobs program not unlike the Civilian Conservation Corps of the Depression era, which put people to work building infrastructure, maintaining parks, preserving public land, and more, all for good wages.
Part of the new executive order establishes a task force to create a Civilian Climate Corps. This contemporary CCC will "mobilize the next generation of conservation and resilience workers and maximize the creation of accessible training opportunities and good jobs. The initiative shall aim to conserve and restore public lands and waters, bolster community resilience, increase reforestation, increase carbon sequestration in the agricultural sector, protect biodiversity, improve access to recreation, and address the changing climate."
You can read the full text of Biden's climate order here (the CCC part is in Sec. 215).
And for more historical context on how the new CCC resembles the other CCC, read this article by journalist Kate Yoder in Grist Magazine.