Sarah Silbiger/Reuters
President Joe Biden announced the roll out of a New Deal-style program to create 20,000 green jobs for young adults on Wednesday. The American Climate Corps aims to create jobs in green energy, climate resilience, and restoring land and ecosystems while creating a pipeline to long term careers.
While the program’s goal is to fight the disastrous impact of climate change while juicing the economy, it’s also attempting to address economic inequity by providing jobs and career opportunities to historically underserved communities and populations. The White House said in a statement that these jobs include “restoring coastal wetlands to protect communities from storm surges and flooding, deploying clean energy, managing forests to improve health and prevent catastrophic wildfires, implementing energy efficient solutions to cut energy bills for hardworking families, and more.”
“We’re opening up pathways to good-paying careers, lifetimes of being involved in the work of making our communities more fair, more sustainable, more resilient,” Ali Zaidi, the White House’s climate policy adviser, told reporters on Wednesday.