[Breitbart] President Joe Biden plans to create a New Deal-style "Civilian Climate Corps" to mobilize "a new, diverse generation of patriotic Americans" for the battle against climate change.On Wednesday, Biden unveiled a flurry of executive actions his administration planned to undertake to "tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad." The president, who campaigned for the White House last year on a platform "environmental justice," argued the actions were necessary if the United States had any hopes of leading a "global response" to the climate crisis.
"Just like we need a unified national response to Covid-19 [coronavirus], we desperately need a unified national response to the climate crisis because there is a climate crisis," Biden told reporters at the White House when signing the executive orders into effect.
To help implement the unified national response, Biden is proposing the creation of a civilian climate corps. The program, based on the poverty-relief programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, will focus on employing individuals to work on energy-efficient infrastructure and conservation programs.
The "Civilian Climate Corps Initiative [will] put a new generation of Americans to work conserving and restoring public lands and waters, increasing reforestation, increasing carbon sequestration ... and addressing the changing climate," a policy brief prepared by the White House reads.
Last year, while running for the White House, Biden embraced the idea of a civilian climate corps. The proposal was one of several that came from a unity task force Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) set up after the conclusion of the Democratic presidential primaries. At the time, Biden also proposed spending upwards of $2 trillion dollars over his term in office to address climate change.