President Biden is announcing a new initiative to train young people in high-demand skills for jobs in the clean energy economy. 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.
The American Climate Corps is a national service of the US government focused on climate change prevention. It was launched in September 2023 by the Biden administration, and is a government interagency project between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Departments of Labor, Interior, Agriculture, and Energy and AmeriCorps. The service plans to recruit 20 thousand young people, and train them for public service or the private sector.
I guess. There’s a lot more “what” here than “how”. And even the “what” is dubious. What does it mean to advance environmental justice?
We need to build enormous solar plants and wind farms. We need to stop turning off nuclear plants. We need to beef up hydroelectric when practical, and learn to use it more for storage than pure generation. We need battery storage. We need a better grid. We need to build more EVs, and mine materials for them, and better recycle them. We need to end useless bullshit like corn ethanol. We need to move from gas/oil heating to heat pumps (including water heaters, etc.). We need to synthesize biofuels for aircraft, ideally using captured CO2.
We need to do all that and ten times more. It’s not clear how a “Climate Corps” accomplishes any of it. “Bolstering community resilience” sounds like a euphemism for “prepare yourself for waves of climate refugees.” Which I suppose probably will be necessary.
I think it is a great idea if they can somehow manage to keep politics out of it. I would much rather see an environmental corps that was international. Right now the primary focus might be on climate but as time went on other things might warrant more attention. A program such as this could include school age children, indigenous people, it would also be a great tool for rehabilitation. It has the potential to bring the best out of millions of people who otherwise would have accomplished nothing in life.
I agree with you, but some people see any effort to help the environment as being political, regardless of what it is.
My wife’s grandfather served in the Civilian Conservation Corps back in the day, and this seems to be a descendant, or at least designed to evoke it. The CCC did a lot of good, and it only ended when WWII broke out.
Judging how much (or how little) somebody else has achieved in life is tempting, but probably wrong and almost surely condescending. Assesing what the best that can be brought out of millions of people is sounds patronising, if not downright messianic-religious to me. I don’t think a Climate Corps is the right instrument for that.
To me it sounds like an idea like a clever comittee would draft: Put American first, make it sound patriotic. Then add Climate, to attract the young ones. And end with a Corps, to get the Pentagon and the militias on your side. But don’t make them too big, lest they become too powerful. And let it fizzle out after the next election cycle. Is anyone else thinking of tanTrump’s American Space Corps?
Certainly. But only one side of the partisan divide misrepresents this as a political issue, because the overwhelming scientific consensus does not suit their political agenda. The objectives of a Climate Corps should be informed by science, and should ignore those who reject the scientific consensus and claim without evidence that there is a politically-motivated conspiracy to silence dissent. In specifying the objectives we should ignore people who make vague claims about “things they have read” that contradict the scientific consensus, but provide no citations to any credible research (indeed no citations of any kind) support those claims. Right?
What do your patronizing views on what categories of people are likely to “accomplish nothing in life” have to do with this?
Ahhhh—yes, the public AND the private sector. Gee whiz, that sure convinces me!!! (Are there any other sectors? ).
How about some specifics? What kind or training are we talking about here?
And how will this new training be any different than the regular training that colleges and trade schools offer already? And why only 20 thousand people?
What are these people going to do?
The whole idea seems stupid to me.
I agree that was a horrible choice of words and did not convey what I had hoped to express. I just believe such a program if run the right way could offer a lot more opportunities for individuals to self actualize.Something we are currently lacking.
As you go on to not just shit on but hijack this topic.
The existence of climate change and its dire effects on our planet are proven facts and are considered Tired Topics on this board, not open for further debate. Stick to discussion on the topic of this thread, or accept that you have nothing to contribute to it.
Please note, this is being upped to a Warning. You are ignoring both P&E rules. You have dropped Anthropogenic climate change is various threads. Even claimed there is no such thing as a climate scientist.
You will not disrupt any more threads with this nonsense. You are not to post any further in this thread. Avoid Climate Denial posts or next will begin the suspensions.
It’s a politician doing something to solve a problem. That’s what politics is. The whole point is to get politics into a problem, because that’s how you solve problems. What do you think politics even is?
The lack of politics over the last decade or so has blinded a lot of folks to this.