Biden administration to create climate corps program, a major progressive ask

The White House will create a federal Climate Corps, a major wish list item for progressive Democrats and environmentalist groups, Biden administration officials confirmed on a call with reporters Tuesday.

On the call, administration officials said the program will employ 20,000 people in its first year. These recruits, they said, will be “doing the important task of conserving and restoring our lands and waters, bolstering community resilience, deploying clean energy … implementing energy efficiency technologies that will cut consumer costs for the American people, and advancing environmental justice.” The program will be open for signups beginning Wednesday. 

President Biden was himself a vocal proponent of a corps on the campaign trail in 2020 and in the first years of his administration. Language establishing such a program was included in early drafts of the Build Back Better Act, the Democratic-majority Congress’s first attempt at a climate and infrastructure bill that was later withdrawn.

Officials on the call confirmed that the program announced this week would include “that same spirit and that structure, that intention” as the earlier proposals.

Echoing a frequent parallel drawn by Biden, an official on the call said that the program would be modeled on the New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps, but while that program was open only to white men, “[t]his climate corps will uplift and empower a diverse and inclusive workforce.”

Administration officials were also asked on the call about the program’s budget and the source of those funds, as well as its position within the federal bureaucracy, but said further details would be forthcoming. 

The announcement came a day after a coalition of more than 50 congressional Democrats, led by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), called on Biden to establish a climate corps through executive action. 

In an interview with The Hill, Varshini Prakash, executive director of the progressive environmental advocacy group Sunrise Movement, who was also on the press call, said that advocates “really see this as the start and not the finish … and we know if we have any hopes of heading off the worst of … climate change, we will have to expand and build upon the initial first steps that have been made here.”

“It will take a massive effort to decarbonize our economy and do it on the scale and timeline that science and justice require, and that is going to mean we have to employ … hundreds of thousands and millions of people in the work of averting climate catastrophe and making our communities more resilient,” she added.

Rachel Frazin contributed.