A new federal program hopes to create jobs and start dealing with climate change across the country.
Seeking funds in Congress as we speak, the Civilian Climate Corps could create up to 1.5 million new jobs.
According to the World Economic Forum, parts of the program can be traced back to a 1930s Depression-era initiative.
“There are so many homes that needed some basic degree of repair, and they needed to rely on volunteer labor,” said Girma, an organizer with the Sunrise Movement, a youth-focused environmental advocacy group. “Talking about what a robust, fully-funded Civilian Climate Corps could mean to places like Lake Charles was really important,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation soon after the march ended. “People were really excited.”
In May and June, climate activists who back the initiative made a 400-mile march from New Orleans to Houston.
Along the way, they stopped in places that were hit hard by the effects of a warming climate. In Lake Charles, Lake Charles, Louisiana, they helped rebuild homes destroyed by last year’s Hurricane Laura.
Their aim was to show the kind of work the corps could do on a larger scale. The activists have also demonstrated outside the White House, asking for greater support to the corps program.
Interestingly, the program takes on the legacy of a 1930s initiative called the Civilian Conservation Corps.
In the Depression era, its members helped create 800 new state parks and 10,000 miles of hiking trails, while planting more than 2 billion trees.
That is really amazing, especially if we know that people back then didn’t even have a word for climate change. Imagine what we could do now if the program receives funding.
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