The American Climate Corps is now hiring
The American Climate Corps is now hiring
The Biden administration aims to sign up 20,000 people in the program's first year
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Why is everyone shitting on this? I'd much rather our federal government be hiring people to do this kind of work than not. Things like invasive species management are not profitable, and I'm glad Biden is investing in them
I think it's a good idea. I think the timing is terrible for actually doing it. It sounds like it was a well-timed election year announcement and it risks being totally undone by Trump in under a year.
It takes time to put programs together, and explains some barriers in the article. It sounds like you're saying Biden shouldn't enact his policy priorities because there's a chance Trump might get elected...?
I'm saying this is an announcement very late in his term that would probably get him some votes. Are you saying it couldn't possibly have been implemented before now?
Biden first announced that he planned to revive a version of FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps during his first days in office in 2021. But the program took a while to get off the ground after its funding got cut during negotiations with Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate bill Biden signed in 2022. In time, the Biden administration cobbled together funding from a bunch of different agencies to start the program
"In time" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that paragraph, I hope you realize that.
To be fair, Joe Manchin was also doing a lot of heavy "sitting in the way".
He tried to pass it in 2022 but Manchin cut it from the IRA, and it took his Admin about 18 months since he signed the IRA to plan, fund, and implement this brand new federal program with no legislative assistance. How is that anything but just how the cards fell?! Not everything is some nefarious scheme
Timing things to win elections is not a nefarious scheme.
You've successfully missed the point
Because it smacks of sticking your head in the sand and pretending everything is fine. Literally the only thing that's going to finally make everyone get serious about climate change is when they're forced to deal with the consequences of it and along comes the federal government to go "don't worry about those consequences, we'll deal with them". This is also money and effort not solving the problem. The first step before literally anything else needs to be stopping climate change. Once that's taken care of then it's time for programs like this to repair the damage. Until then it's just a bandage on a sucking chest wound, you're literally wasting time and money that won't change anything because the problem is just going to keep getting worse.
Can you please operationalize "stopping climate change?"
Sure, step 1 is undo everything that's been done to the EPA over the last couple decades and then go the opposite direction. Give them real teeth to actually hurt businesses that damage the environment. Not just fines but things like barring them from doing business in the US if they're a repeat offender. Should probably go after the big oil companies as well, they profited for nearly half a century despite knowing the damage they were doing and actively working to cover it up. Seize their assets, liquidate them, and go after the personal finances of their current and former executives.
Step 2 is to put federal and state funds into nuclear and renewable power with the goal of eliminating all coal, oil, and natural gas power plants over the next decade.
Step 3 is banning ICE cars, and putting heavily enforced restrictions on ships. And don't let them take the international waters loophole. If a ship is capable of polluting by running on essentially sludge while in international waters don't even let it dock in the US.
Step 4 is working with other countries to enact the same changes internationally. We had a strong start with the Paris accords and then Trump took a giant shit on them. We need to show the international community that Trump was an anomaly and we're serious about climate change. This needs to include both a carrot and stick. Get other countries on board voluntarily at first, but anyone whose dragging their feet needs to start facing sanctions and increasing import and export tariffs the longer they delay and the worse they pollute.
The legislature will have to do all of that, and Republicans control the House, soooo....
They're just stating what needs to be done. Not now feasible it'll be.
It is way worse than most realize. I watched this Climate Town video recently about natural gas and it really was jarring as not only are we not doing enough to reduce emissions, we are actually accelerating them. https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=jpqQRuHc-IqSwV4w