Bill Gates Says Planting Trees to Solve Climate Crisis Is 'Complete Nonsense'

Sissi Cao
Thu, September 21, 2023 

Bill Gates speaks onstage at The New York Times Climate Forward Summit 2023 at The Times Center on September 21, 2023, in New York City. Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for The New York Times

Bill Gates is a major donor to causes fighting climate change, both on a societal and personal level. Every year, he writes a $10 million check to a company to buy clean energy for others as a way to offset carbon emissions generated by himself. But his money only goes to climate solutions proven by technology, not untested approaches such as planting trees.

At the New York Times Climate Forward Summit today (Sept. 21) in New York City, Gates said he is the largest individual client of Climeworks, a company that develops technologies for capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air. In addition to carbon capture, the company does “a variety of things” for Gates, he said, such as buying electric heat pumps for low-income households and solar panels.

“But I don’t use some of the less proven approaches. I don’t plant trees,” Gates said during an onstage interview with New York Times climate correspondent David Gelles. Gelles remarked that many people believe, if we just plant enough trees, it will take care of the climate issue altogether.

“And that’s complete nonsense,” Gates said. “I mean, are we the science people or are we the idiots? Which one do we want to be?”

After a brief, awkward silence, Gelles quipped he was going to call his friend, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and ask what he thinks. In 2020, Benioff and his wife, Lynne, started an initiative to plant a trillion trees on Earth by 2030 as part of his solution to the climate crisis.

Climate scientists have found that simply planting a lot of trees would have a minimal effect on halting global warming because it takes a long time for trees to reach maturity and absorb enough carbon to make a difference. An analysis earlier this year by MIT and the nonprofit Climate Interactive found planting a trillion trees would prevent only 0.15 degrees Celsius (0.27 Fahrenheit) of warming by 2100.

Climeworks’s carbon capture plant can capture up to 4,000 tons of CO₂ from the air annually on a 0.42-acre land; that’s almost 1,000 times more effective than trees on the same land, according to the company’s website. Climeworks sells monthly carbon offset plans priced from $28 to $112 to individual customers. The more you pay, the more CO2 from the air the company will remove in your name.

Gates argued for a tech-driven approach to tackle climate change. His family nonprofit, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a major donor to climate causes. And his climate-focused investment firm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, backs more than a dozen startups developing clean energy solutions.

“I’m the person who is doing the most on climate in terms of the innovation and how we can square multiple goals,” Gates said.

He stressed the role of innovation in government-driven climate initiatives because policies, such as subsidies and carbon taxes, are often either unviable or insufficient.

“I believe we should spend a lot of money on climate change. I believe we should have very high carbon taxes. But the political realities are such that, without innovation, it’s unlikely, particularly in middle-income countries, that the brute-force approach will be successful,” Gates said.

DeSantis: Humans are ‘safer than ever’ from effects of climate change
Kelly Garrity
Wed, September 20, 2023 



Bryon Houlgrave/AP Photo

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday that humans are “safer than ever” from the effects of climate change, less than a month after a hurricane pounded Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

The use of the phrase “climate change” increased between 2018 and 2020, DeSantis said during a campaign speech rolling out his energy policy in Midland, Texas. Despite reports from the World Meteorological Organization showing that climate change impacts continued to worsen during that time, DeSantis attributed the term’s jump in use to “ideology.”

“This is driven by ideology. It's not driven by reality,” DeSantis said. “In reality, human beings are safer than ever from climate disasters. The death rate for climate disasters has declined by 98 percent over the last hundred years, and the No. 1 reason for that is people that have had access to reliable electricity, have power.”

While the number of weather-related natural disasters caused by climate change has increased, related deaths have fallen over the last 50 years, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Experts attribute the decline to better forecasting and better infrastructure for dealing with extreme weather.

DeSantis’ remarks come less than a year after Hurricane Ian — the second-deadliest storm the continental U.S. has seen in decades, after Hurricane Katrina — devastated his home state, leaving more than 100 people dead and destroying homes and businesses.

Last month, Florida grappled with the fallout from another storm, Hurricane Idalia, which pummeled the state and left more than 245,000 customers without electricity as trees snapped by strong winds brought down power lines. Four people died in the hurricane.

The World Health Organization said climate change is "the biggest health threat facing humanity" and is expected to cause "approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress" between 2030 and 2050 from lack of "clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food and secure shelter."

DeSantis Says Humanity ‘Safer Than Ever’ From Climate Change… Weeks After Major Hurricane

Nick Visser
Updated Thu, September 21, 2023



Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said humans are “safer than ever” from the threat of climate change, and he blasted the Biden administration’s effort to address the phenomenon as he unveiled an oil- and gas-first energy plan on Wednesday.

DeSantis, who is vying for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, made the comments during a speech in Midland, Texas. He pledged to enact a slew of policies to roll back efforts to address climate change, including proposals to make electric vehicles more expensive, ramp up domestic production of fossil fuels and remove the U.S. from the landmark Paris climate agreement.

“We’ve seen a concerted effort to ramp up the fear when it comes to things like global warming and climate change,” he said Wednesday, claiming Democrats were trying to “circumscribe your ambitions.”

“They are even telling our younger generations to have fewer children, or not to even have children, on the grounds that somehow children are going to make our climate and planet unlivable — and that’s wrong to say.”

DeSantis’ comments come just weeks after a Category 3 hurricane slammed into Florida, bringing record-high floodwaters and warnings from scientists that climate change is fueling more dangerous and more frequent storms. The secretary-general of the United Nations warned this week that humanity has “opened the gates to hell” and that even under current commitments, has not done nearly enough to limit planet-warming emissions.

The Florida governor seemed to reject scientists’ concern on Wednesday, saying that although the climate had “clearly” changed, his policies to increase energy production were in fact a “practical way to reduce global emissions.” Warnings about a future of climate-related disasters, he said, were merely “fear tactics.”

“We deal with hurricanes in Florida,” the governor said. “We deal with fires, too, in Florida, but what I would say is when… Joe Biden says that he’s more worried, like in 10 years, with the climate than a nuclear war, I mean, I’m sorry, that’s just not true.”

The lectern in front of the governor held a sign reading “$2 in 2025,” pointing to his campaign promise to lower gas prices to $2 a gallon should he be elected to the White House. The Biden campaign took umbrage with DeSantis’ attacks, calling his plans “deeply unserious and impractical” and “chock-full of the climate denialism that defines the MAGA Republican Party.”

In an Aug. 30 satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Hurricane Idalia is shown over Florida and crossing into Georgia while Hurricane Franklin, to the right, moves along off the East Coast.

In an Aug. 30 satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Hurricane Idalia is shown over Florida and crossing into Georgia while Hurricane Franklin, to the right, moves along off the East Coast.

“Voters need look no further than DeSantis’s own state — where his agenda is leading to skyrocketing energy costs for his constituents and natural disasters are causing tens of billions of dollars in damages — to know what DeSantis’s plan would mean for the country,” Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Biden’s reelection campaign, told The New York Times.

China climate envoy says phasing out fossil fuels 'unrealistic'

Thu, September 21, 2023 

By David Stanway

SINGAPORE, Sept 22 (Reuters) - The complete phasing-out of fossil fuels is not realistic, China's top climate official said, adding that these climate-warming fuels must continue to play a vital role in maintaining global energy security.

China is the world's biggest consumer of fossil fuels including coal and oil, and its special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua was responding to comments by ambassadors at a forum in Beijing on Thursday ahead of the COP28 climate meeting in Dubai in November. Reuters obtained a copy of text of Xie's speech, and a video recording of the meeting.

Countries are under pressure to make more ambitious pledges to tackle global warming after a U.N.-led global "stocktake" said 20 gigatons of additional carbon dioxide reductions would be needed this decade alone to keep temperatures from exceeding the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The stocktake will be at the centre of discussions at the COP28 climate meeting, with campaigners hoping it will create the political will to set clear targets to end coal and oil use.

Xie, however, said the intermittent nature of renewable energy and the immaturity of key technologies like energy storage means the world must continue to rely on fossil fuels to safeguard economic growth.

"It is unrealistic to completely phase out fossil fuel energy," said Xie, who will represent China at COP28 this year.

At climate talks in Glasgow in 2021, China led efforts to change the language of the final agreement from "phasing out" to "phasing down" fossil fuels. China also supports a bigger role for abatement technologies like carbon capture and storage.

While ending fossil fuel use would not be on the table at COP28, Xie said China was open to setting a global renewable energy target as long as it took the divergent economic conditions of different countries into account.

He also said he welcomed pledges made to him by his U.S. counterpart John Kerry that a $100 billion annual fund to help developing countries adapt to climate change would soon be made available, adding it was "only a drop in the bucket".

China and the United States, the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, resumed top-level climate talks in July after a hiatus brought about by U.S. politician Nancy Pelosi's visit to the self-governing island of Taiwan, which China claims.

China has rejected U.S. attempts to treat climate change as a diplomatic "oasis" that can be separated from the broader geopolitical tensions between the two sides, with U.S. trade sanctions on Chinese solar panels still a sore point.

Xie said protectionism could drive up the price of solar panels by 20-25% and hold back the energy transition, and called on countries not to "politicise" cooperation in new energy.

He also reiterated China's opposition to the E.U. Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which will impose carbon tariffs on imports from China and elsewhere (Reporting by David Stanway; editing by Miral Fahmy)

Pete Buttigieg Explains the Difference Between Climate Change and Seasons to Republican Lawmaker

Christopher Wiggins

THE ADVOCATE
Thu, September 21, 2023


Pete Buttigieg, Leaf, California Rep. Doug LaMalfa

In a surreal turn of events during a Congressional hearing, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg found himself explaining basic climate science to California Rep. Doug LaMalfa after the Republican congressman conflated the season of autumn with the global issue of climate change on Wednesday.

The conversation started straightforwardly, with Buttigieg responding to a question about the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, expressing a fundamental and widely accepted point: “What I can tell you is that climate change is real. We got to do something about it.”

LaMalfa interjected, “Yeah. This one’s called autumn.”

The remark left many in the room scratching their heads, and Buttigieg, apparently taken aback, sought clarification, asking, “I’m sorry?”

LaMalfa doubled down, explaining his puzzling stance.

“This climate change right now is called autumn,” he declared.

Buttigieg then attempted to draw a clear line between the natural occurrence of seasonal changes and the long-term shifts that define climate change.

“Yeah. That’s the seasons changing, which respectively is not the same thing as the climate changing,” Buttigieg explained.

He went on to underscore the personal and profound implications of the climate crisis, noting, “As somebody who is hoping to retire in the 2050s and who has kids who will be old enough to ask me as they’re getting to their thirties, whether we did enough to deal with climate change or whether we just did what was convenient. I take that really seriously.”

But LaMalfa was unfazed.

Pivoting to a financial argument, LaMalfa expressed concerns about the potential economic impacts of addressing climate change, saying, “The trillions and trillions we’re going to cost our kids to chase a tiny percentage of CO2 will bankrupt all of us, bankrupt our economy, and ship it to China for all the other reasons. So I yield back.”

Biden uses executive power to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps

MATTHEW DALY
Wed, September 20, 2023 




 Climate activists rally in front of the White House at Lafayette Square to demand that President Joe Biden declare a climate emergency and move the country rapidly away from fossil fuels, July 4, 2023, in Washington. After being thwarted by Congress, Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps that will serve as a major green jobs training program. 

(AP Photo/Yuri Gripas, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — After being thwarted by Congress, President Joe Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps that will serve as a major green jobs training program.

In an announcement Wednesday, the White House said the program will employ more than 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires.

The climate corps had been proposed in early versions of the sweeping climate law approved last year but was jettisoned amid strong opposition from Republicans and concerns about cost.

Democrats and environmental advocacy groups never gave up on the plan and pushed Biden in recent weeks to issue an executive order authorizing what the White House now calls the American Climate Corps.

“After years of demonstrating and fighting for a Climate Corps, we turned a generational rallying cry into a real jobs program that will put a new generation to work stopping the climate crisis,'' said Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, an environmental group that has led the push for a climate corps.

With the new corps “and the historic climate investments won by our broader movement, the path towards a Green New Deal is beginning to become visible,'' Prakash said, referring to a comprehensive jobs-and-climate plan supported by many activists and some Democrats but ridiculed by Republicans as a socialist nightmare that would raise taxes and hamper the economy.

Prakash, a frequent Biden critic, participated in a White House call on Tuesday promoting the new job corps, which comes as Biden tries to strengthen his appeal to young voters in the 2024 presidential campaign.

The Sunrise Movement and other climate activists, including many young adults, were outraged this spring after Biden approved the huge Willow oil-drilling project in Alaska. Opponents say the project and others approved by Biden put his climate legacy at risk and are a breach of his 2020 campaign promise to stop new oil drilling on federal lands.

Those concerns were put aside, for now, as environmental activists hailed the new jobs program, which is modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps, created in the 1930s by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, as part of the New Deal.

“Young people nationwide are excited to see the launch of the American Climate Corps, enhancing career pathways in clean energy, conservation and climate resilience,'' said Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, an organization that promotes education, registration and mobilization for voters age 18 to 35.

"Young people are fighting for climate justice every day in their community, and now they have even more opportunity to continue this fight in their careers,'' Ramirez said.

More than 50 Democratic lawmakers, including Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had also encouraged Biden to create a climate corps, saying in a letter on Monday that “the climate crisis demands a whole-of-government response at an unprecedented scale.''

The lawmakers cited deadly heat waves in the Southwest and across the nation, as well as dangerous floods in New England and devastating wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui, among recent examples of climate-related disasters.

Democrats called creation of the climate corps “historic” and a key step toward fulfilling the vision of the Green New Deal.

“Today President Biden listened to the (environmental) movement, and he delivered with an American Climate Corps,'' a beaming Markey said at a celebratory news conference outside the Capitol.

"We are starting to turn the green dream into a green reality,'' added Ocasio-Cortez, who co-sponsored the Green New Deal legislation with Markey four years ago.

"You all are changing the world,'' she told young activists.

The White House declined to say how much the program will cost or how it will be paid for, but Markey and other Democrats said money from the climate law and the 2021 infrastructure law would serve as a “down payment” for thousands of jobs.

Republicans have largely dismissed the climate corps as a do-gooder proposal that would waste money and could even take jobs away from other workers displaced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We don’t need another FDR program, and the idea that this is going to help land management is a false idea as well,” Arkansas Rep. Bruce Westerman, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in 2021.

Rep. Joe Neguse, a Colorado Democrat, said the program should pay “a living wage" while offering health care coverage and other benefits.

A key distinction between the original Civilian Conservation Corps and the new climate contingent is that, unlike the 1930s, the U.S. economy is not in an economic depression. The U.S. unemployment rate was 3.8% in August, low by historical measures.

The new corps is also likely to be far more diverse than the largely white and male force created 90 years ago.

White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi said the administration will work with at least six federal agencies to create the climate corps and will pair with at least 10 states. California, Colorado, Maine, Michigan and Washington have already begun similar programs, while five more are launching their own climate corps, Zaidi said: Arizona, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina and Utah.

The initiative will provide job training and service opportunities to work on a wide range of projects, including restoring coastal wetlands to protect communities from storm surges and flooding; clean energy projects such as wind and solar power; managing forests to prevent catastrophic wildfires; and energy efficient solutions to cut energy bills for consumers, the White House said.

Creation of the climate corps comes as the Environmental Protection Agency launches a $4.6 billion grant competition for states, municipalities and tribes to cut climate pollution and advance environmental justice. The Climate Pollution Reduction Grants are funded by the 2022 climate law and are intended to drive community-driven solutions to slow climate change.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the grants will help "communities so they can chart their own paths toward the clean energy future.”

The deadline for states and municipalities to apply is April 1, with grants expected in late 2024. Tribes and territories must apply by May 1, with grants expected by early 2025.

Biden to launch 'American Climate Corps' following calls from activists, Democratic lawmakers

BEN GITTLESON and MORGAN WINSOR
Wed, September 20, 2023 


President Joe Biden on Wednesday will launch the "American Climate Corps," according to the White House, which described it as "a workforce training and service initiative" for more than 20,000 Americans "that will ensure more young people have access to the skills-based training necessary for good-paying careers in the clean energy and climate resilience economy."

Biden had endorsed a similar idea of a "Civilian Climate Corps" while running for president in the 2021 election. But the initiative was ultimately left out of the pared down version of Biden's "Build Back Better" bill that became the Inflation Reduction Act.

Dozens of climate activists and Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly called on Biden to create a federally funded jobs program that would carry out climate and conservation projects. They have implored him to use his executive powers as president to establish the initiative on his own, which is what he's doing now.

Wednesday's announcement comes amid the annual Climate Week that coincides with the yearly United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

While Biden spoke about the importance of tackling climate change in his address to the 78th Session of the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, he notably will not attend a gathering on Wednesday hosted by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres that will reportedly focus on new action countries are taking to fight climate change. U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry will attend in Biden's stead.

"The American Climate Corps, just in its first year of recruitment, will put to work a new, diverse generation of more than 20,000 Americans doing the important tasks of conserving and restoring our lands and waters, bolstering community resilience, deploying clean energy -- in many cases, distributed and community based -- implementing energy efficiency technologies that will cut consumer costs for the American people, and advancing environmental justice so long overdue in so many places," Biden's national climate adviser, Ali Zaidi, told reporters during a telephone call on Monday.

A major part of the initiative, according to Zaidi, will be teaming up with apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs across the country and pushing more Americans from diverse backgrounds into these programs -- ultimately resulting in well-paying jobs for them, thanks to funding from Biden's climate legislation.

Americans will be able to sign up online for the American Climate Corps, which the White House said will train young people in clean energy, conservation and climate resilience related skills. There will be a focus on climate justice, too, with an emphasis on helping underserved communities, according to the White House.

The Biden administration will coordinate recruitment for the American Climate Corps across the federal government and streamline pathways from the initiative and related programs into employment in the broader federal civil service, the White House said.

abcnews.go.com

Biden launches 'climate corps' for green jobs

AFP
Wed, September 20, 2023 at 8:38 AM MDT·2 min read

US President Joe Biden, pictured in Arizona in August 2023, has made the clean energy transition a key plank of his 2024 reelection bid (Jim WATSON)


US President Joe Biden launched a new "Climate Corps" on Wednesday to help young people get green jobs, as he tries to sell voters on his plans for a clean energy economy.

"Today, we are mobilizing the next generation of clean energy, conservation, and climate resilience workers," Biden said on X, formerly Twitter.

Biden added that the scheme would train over 20,000 young people to get "good-paying jobs" after they complete their paid training.

The US president has made the economy a key plank of his bid for reelection in 2024, particularly through his signature Inflation Reduction Act.

The ambitious climate law aims to speed the US transition to clean energy, rebuild US industry and boost social justice.

Biden, who is in New York for the UN General Assembly, warned the world body yesterday that the climate crisis poses an existential threat to "all of humanity."

US climate activists, who have long called for the initiative, gave it a mixed reception.

One group, Evergreen, said it was a "big step toward delivering good jobs for young people in the booming clean energy economy."

But Keanu Arpels-Josiah, an organizer of an anti-fossil fuels march in New York last Sunday, said it was "not enough."

The Climate Corps' name has echoes of the US Peace Corps which has sent volunteers around the world for decades.

US media said however that it was more closely modelled on a scheme during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" to get America out of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

The Civilian Conservation Corps set around a quarter of a million unemployed young men to work on a huge program of projects like reforestation and dam-building.

dk/bfm

Civilian Climate Corps Launched by White House During Climate Week

Lexi McMenamin

TEEN VOGUE
Wed, September 20, 2023

A year after the concept of a "Civilian Climate Corps" was scrapped in the negotiation over the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden announced the formation of the American Climate Corps, a first-of-its-kind jobs program “to train young people in high-demand skills for jobs in the clean energy economy,” per the White House’s new website to sign up for more information. The American Climate Corps will create a projected 20,000 jobs for young people in its first year.

Modeled on an FDR/New Deal-era program (nearly a century ago), Biden has long floated the policy, signing an executive order in his first days in office for agencies to begin brainstorming about such a program. Per NPR, the resulting program is smaller than previously proposed iterations. According to the Washington Post, participants will be paid, but specifics on compensation were not shared. NPR also reported that most positions will not require prior experience.

Eight states have similar programs underway, and the White House said in its announcement that five more states – Arizona, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina and Utah – will also launch programs.

The current concept came out of the work of the Sunrise Movement and other climate activists who have agitated the past two administrations over the last five years to take serious action on the climate crisis.

In spring 2021, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — the original sponsors of the Green New Deal in Congress — introduced a bill that would have created a Civilian Climate Corps. This past Monday, Markey and Ocasio-Cortez sent a letter to the Biden administration asking that the program be implemented via executive order, as House Republicans are unlikely to pass the bill; the letter was signed by 51 members of Congress.

The announcement comes amid several days of climate protests in New York City timed to a United Nations climate summit during its general assembly. Biden faced condemnation from protesters for not attending the summit, as well as for what they consider to be inadequate urgency and progress in combating climate change.

Sunrise is celebrating the newly announced program, with executive director Varshini Prakash saying in a statement, “We turned a generational rallying cry into a real jobs program that will put a new generation to work stopping the climate crisis.”

But others have been less impressed. Keanu Arpels-Josiah, a member of Fridays for Future NYC and an organizer behind Sunday’s March to End Fossil Fuels, warned in a statement that the program, while important, is simply not enough to address the greater problem: “A Climate Corps that focuses solely on promoting renewables doesn't do the job. It won’t undo the Biden administration’s damage in approving climate bombs like [the Willow Project],” Arpels-Josiah said. “It won’t end new fossil fuel projects and phase out existing projects in the timeline we need for our generation to survive.”

Teen Vogue 

Biden administration launches first-of-its-kind American Climate Corps program

Ella Nilsen and Donald Judd, 

CNN
Wed, September 20, 2023 

President Joe Biden’s administration is launching the first-ever American Climate Corps Wednesday, the White House said, a workforce training and service initiative aimed at preparing American youth for jobs in clean energy and climate resilience.

“The American Climate Corps, just in its first year of recruitment, will put to work a new diverse generation of more than 20,000 Americans doing the important task of conserving and restoring our lands and waters, bolstering community resilience, deploying clean energy – in many cases, distributed and community based – implementing energy efficiency technologies that will cut consumer costs for the American people, and advancing environmental justice so long overdue in so many places,” White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi told reporters on a call previewing the announcement Tuesday.

The new corps will support a wide range of jobs, including restoring coastal wetlands, forest management to help fight wildfires, and building out clean energy projects.

Creating a Civilian Climate Corps has long been an ask of youth climate groups, including the Sunrise Movement.

The corps was an idea first introduced as part of “unity” campaign task forces between Biden’s 2020 campaign and representatives of former Democratic presidential contender and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders – task forces that had a big hand in crafting policy Biden ultimately implemented as president.

Sunrise co-founder Varshini Prakash and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, were members of the climate task force, as well as Biden’s first White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy and current US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry.

“A lot of the impetus and inspiration came from early proposals Sunrise shared on the Bernie/Biden task force,” Prakash told CNN in an interview Tuesday.

But the road to making the corps a reality was long and fraught. Initially proposed as part of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda and bill, the program was stripped out of the Inflation Reduction Act, crafted by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Prakash told CNN the idea then moved to the White House to be implemented.

RELATED: Biden’s climate law has led to 86,000 new jobs and $132 billion in investment, new report says

Prakash said the new corps is an important part of Biden’s reelection argument to young people, but added much more needs to be done to cut fossil fuel use and combat the impacts of the climate crisis.

“I think this represents a significant step forward,” Prakash said. “Young people need to see actions like this and more of it in the leadup to the 2024 election. There’s more to be done on the climate crisis.”

Boys at work at a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, Maryland, circa 1935. The CCC was a public work relief program for unemployed men, providing vocational training through the performance of useful work related to conservation and development of natural resources in the US from 1933 to 1942. - Fotosearch/Getty ImagesMore

Five states – California, Colorado, Maine, Michigan and Washington – have already launched successful Climate Corps programs, with an additional five – Arizona, Utah, Minnesota, North Carolina and Maryland – announcing their own state programs Wednesday, Zaidi said.

Six agencies – the Department of Labor, Department of the Interior, Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Energy and AmeriCorps – will sign a memorandum of understanding establishing the new program, with AmeriCorps standing up a new “American Climate Corps hub” to support the initiative, building on investments from the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act aimed at climate resilience and conservation, an official told reporters Tuesday.

Signups for the new program launch Wednesday at whitehouse.gov/climatecorps, while the recruitment cycle will follow over the coming year, the official added.

NC launches Climate Action Corps same day as Biden announces national effort
Adam Wagner

Wed, September 20, 2023 

newsobserver.com

Travis Long/tlong@newsobserver.com

North Carolina on Wednesday launched its Climate Action Corps, a new service effort that will station 25 people across the state to work on projects intended to boost resiliency against climate-fueled disasters

The N.C. Climate Action Corps will collaborate with the American Climate Corps, which President Joe Biden announced Wednesday. Both announcements come amid Climate Week.

An announcement from Gov. Roy Cooper’s office listed a number of projects on which Climate Action Corps members could serve. Those include planting trees to address urban heat islands, helping build living shorelines to protect communities against storm surge, and building community gardens, among other projects.

“In North Carolina, we have prioritized the transition to clean energy and this expansion will bolster our efforts. This project will strengthen our clean energy workforce as we continue to lead the way toward a clean energy future,” Cooper said in a written statement.

The N.C. Corps will operate through the N.C. Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service. It is being launched in partnership with California Volunteers, a California government program that is aiming to turn its climate corps into a national effort.

North Carolina was one of five states that launched a climate corps on Wednesday, coinciding with Biden’s announcement. The others were Arizona, Maryland, Minnesota and Utah.

With the announcement, North Carolina became one of 10 states with a climate corps.

Service members will work in communities that do not have existing AmeriCorps programs and that are suffering from the impacts of climate change, according to the program’s website.

Those serving full time will earn $30,000 and will be eligible for a scholarship at the end of their service, according to an announcement from California Volunteers.

Funding for the state-level programs is being provided through private philanthropy and AmeriCorps, according to California Volunteers’ announcement.

During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden discussed starting a Civilian Climate Corps. Those efforts were ultimately stymied.

Wednesday, though, Biden signed an executive order launching the new corps that is in many ways modeled after the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era work relief program that saw young men scatter across the country to work on the nation’s public lands.

According to the White House, the new federal program will see 20,000 young people work on projects like installing energy efficiency items, restoring coastal wetlands and managing forests to prevent wildfires from turning catastrophic.

This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and the 1Earth Fund, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.

The next-generation "forest army": Biden launches civilian climate corps program

Elizabeth Hlavinka
Wed, September 20, 2023 

volunteers removing trash Ty ONeil/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The Biden Administration today launched a civilian Climate Corps program intended to employ 20,000 Americans to build and restore public lands. The idea is to create jobs while also working toward the Biden Administration's promise to reach net zero emissions by 2050, deploying corps members to work in wind and solar production as well as environmental conservation projects. Created in the image of a Great Depression-era civilian climate corps program incorporated by former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Biden's program aims to "mobilize the next generation of conservation and resilience workers and maximize the creation of accessible training opportunities and good jobs." However, the program will employ far less than the more than 3 million men in Roosevelt's era.

The program was initially outlined in an executive order Biden issued during his first month in office. Originally, $30 billion was set aside for the program as a part of the Inflation Reduction Act, but this was ultimately removed. Administrative officials declined to tell the Washington Post how much or from where funding will come from instead, the outlet reported.

On Monday, House Democrats called on Biden to move forward with the program, citing the urgency of the climate crisis as demonstrated by recent flooding, extreme heat and devastating wildfires like those that ravaged Maui in August. "By leveraging the historic climate funding secured during your Administration, using existing authorities and coordinating across AmeriCorps and other relevant federal agencies, your Administration can create a federal Civilian Climate Corps that unites its members in an effort to fight climate change, build community resilience, support environmental justice and develop career pathways to good-paying union jobs focused on climate resilience and a clean economy," they wrote.

On Sunday, tens of thousands of protestors marched in New York City urging Biden to declare a climate emergency, which he still has not done in spite of experts warning of an ongoing "biological holocaust" while humanity dangerously pushes our planet to its extreme limits. Meanwhile, record-shattering heatwaves made summer 2023 the hottest in humanity's history and the U.S. experienced a record-breaking 23 natural disasters exceeding $1 billion in damages.

Opinion

Will Biden's new American Climate Corps match the success of the California Conservation Corps?

David Helvarg
Thu, September 21, 2023 

California Conservation Corps firefighters prepare as flames from the 2021 Alisal fire advance near Refugio Canyon on the Gaviota coast. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times)

On Wednesday, President Biden used his executive power to establish the American Climate Corps, which will employ and train 20,000 young people in the work of climate resilience.

Similar to but more modest than the famed CCC — the Civilian Conservation Corps established by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 during the Great Depression — the ACC can provide young people with long-term job skills while accelerating the country's transition to renewable energy.

Read more: Editorial: Biden's Climate Conservation Corps could be an old answer for new problems

Biden had hoped an updated, climate-focused version of FDR’s corps would be a provision in the Build Back Better legislative efforts he introduced at the beginning of his term. That agenda got watered down, with the Climate Corps among the losses. Republicans, and a few Democrats — notably Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — attacked it as a waste of money and “pure socialist wish fulfillment.”

The corps' enemies, however, never questioned that it would be effective. That's because California proved the value of a modern CCC years ago.

The California Conservation Corps, started in 1976 by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, has a current roster of 1,634 members, mostly between the ages of 18 and 29, who typically serve for about a year. They join front-line battles against climate-emergency wildfires and floods, restore river habitat, “manage” forests, build and maintain wilderness trails, and retrofit homes, schools and businesses with solar panels and other forms of clean energy through state contracts.

The corps tallies its achievements with a range of metrics. Since its inception, for example, its members have planted 24.6 million trees, improved national and state parks to the tune of 11 million hours of work, and filled more than 3.5 million sandbags during floods and storms.

Read more: Opinion: On the climate crisis, it's time to lean into pessimism

The payoff has been good for California, but it’s personal too. If new corps members don’t have a high school degree (about 15% to 20% don’t), they’re required to get one through the corps’ school partnerships. That schooling adds 10 hours to their 40-hour work week and opens new opportunities for more training and scholarships. California Conservation Corps alumni have gone on to be professional firefighters, hydrologists, electricians and park rangers.

Over the last few years, I've watched corps crews take chain saws to burned "hazard trees" at a state park east of Lake Tahoe, clear road obstructions during a storm, and cut fire lines under the direction of Cal Fire in Butte County.

One of the chain saw crew members, Elizabeth Wing, who was 21 when we met, summed up her experience with a joke: "We're sure living up to the promise.” She was referring to the guarantee contained in the corps motto: “Hard work, low pay, miserable conditions, and more!” The "more" in the motto works out differently for every corps member.

“I was just drifting job to job and wanted to be part of something larger than myself,” recalled 26-year-old corps firefighter Luie Valez. “I haven’t looked back since.”

Read more: Opinion: We're very far off course in meeting global climate goals. Get ready for Plan B

“I’ve had a lot of crappy jobs, but not this one,” agreed Martin Castellon, who was raised in Tijuana and San Diego, and spent his 26th birthday shoveling snow for the corps at its residential center in Tahoe.

“The thing is it’s not a bunch of troubled youth like a lot of people think,” adds John Alviso, 24, another firefighter and a former Army reservist. “It’s people who want to learn and get a career and are willing to work hard to do that.”

Bruce Saito, the California corps' director, expects his organization and more than 150 similar ones around the nation to "benefit from Biden's incredible move and action." He anticipates "dedicated grants to each state to strengthen and advance the work, [and] enrollment service opportunities for thousands of young folks to serve and address climate issues not just for California."

Read more: Editorial: No more half measures on climate change. The next generation is right to demand an end to fossil fuels

Biden's use of executive power to resuscitate his Climate Corps idea is in part a response to young voters' climate fears and frustrations. When he greenlighted the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska earlier this year, the backlash was immediate from young voters and environmentalists. The national ACC effort, which so far consists of a recruitment website, may help motivate a cohort Biden badly needs in 2024.

On the other hand, the ACC is guaranteed to draw ongoing flak from the same forces that zeroed it out of the Inflation Reduction Act last year. After all, Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) claimed during the legislation battles that the corps idea was a way to “bully every state to become more and more like California.”

Replace the word "bully" with "inspire" and I have to hope that is exactly what happens.

David Helvarg is a writer; executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy group; and co-host of "Rising Tide: The Ocean Podcast."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Biden’s American Climate Corps Isn’t Enough—but It’s a Start

Tony Ho Tran
Wed, September 20, 2023 
Reuters

President Joe Biden announced the rollout 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.

The Climate Corps fulfills a campaign promise by Biden, who issued an executive order in his first week in office for the administration to create a green jobs program. The project would aim to “conserve and restore public lands and waters, bolster community resilience, increase reforestation, increase carbon sequestration in the agricultural sector, protect biodiversity, improve access to recreation, and address the changing climate,” Biden wrote at the time.

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The announcement drew praise from climate activists including the Sunrise Movement, which had previously criticized Biden for his lack of action in fighting climate change. However, some experts believe that, while positive, more needs to be done in order to appropriately address what many characterize as an existential risk in climate change.

“My view on the climate initiatives is ‘yes and more,’” James Salzman, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Daily Beast in an email. “There are no obvious downsides or perverse incentives created by the program, so anything additional we can do to address the challenge is better than not.”

“The American Climate Corps' promise to train and employ 20,000 young people is less than one-tenth of the size of the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps at its peak of around 300,000 workers,” Jon Christensen, an adjunct professor at the UCLA Institute of Environment and Sustainability and environmental historian, told The Daily Beast. However, he added that “we're living in a very different time. We're not in a depression. Unemployment is near historic lows.”

The American Climate Corps 20,000 jobs is still a fairly modest goal considering the country’s population of more than 330 million people. It also calls into question where exactly these jobs will be focused—and who exactly gets to fill them.

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While Christensen said that the American Climate Corps was “historically important and significant,” he adds that it is contingent on the Biden administration being able to stay true to its promise of handing the jobs out in an equitable manner while targeting the communities that need it the most.

“It really needs to keep a focus on those with the highest needs,” Christensen said. “There are areas with pockets of unemployment that are higher in the United States—especially disadvantaged, low-income communities of color... This could really have a positive impact on the lives of young people from those communities as they begin their careers.”

Another reason for caution is the fact that the language surrounding the Climate Corps is currently vague. There’s no defined timeline on when things will begin to roll out, nor is there a concrete plan for what initiatives and jobs there will be or how they’ll be deployed.

Put it another way: It’s one thing to say you want to create jobs, tackle climate change, and protect vulnerable communities, it’s another thing entirely to actually do it.

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“We need to think about specific improvements,” Mark Jacobson, an associate professor of economics at the University of California San Diego and climate policy expert, told The Daily Beast.

He adds that the challenges involved in the Climate Corps go beyond simply giving people jobs. It’s creating a defined career path for tens of thousands of Americans while attempting to address climate resiliency issues. As such, it requires a more defined and clear-cut path to success beyond the vague sentiments currently outlined by the Biden administration.

“What we have is something that's potentially a little bit harder and more involved,” he said. “And that's why laying that out will be important. The goal has to be about training and improving the future prospects of the folks who sign up now. How exactly is that going to work?”

For now, the Climate Corps is a good first step in addressing current and future climate challenges, while creating jobs for disadvantaged communities. Christensen said he hopes that it gets expanded in the future beyond the current 20,000 job goal. That way even more underrepresented folks have the opportunity to access its benefits.

“It is a historically significant investment in environmental justice,” he said. “But it has to be also accompanied by people from low-income households that have borne the burden of pollution and disinvestment.”

 The Daily Beast.

Climate change is already costing us money, but we have a chance to limit the worst of it and prosper. Here's how.

Marianne Guenot
Thu, September 21, 2023 

Extreme weather is occurring more often. These events pose risks to the economy. AP

This article is part of Insider's "The True Cost of Extreme Weather" project. Read more here.

The climate crisis is about many things. One of them is that tiny numbers add up to big effects.

About two degrees Fahrenheit. That's how much the planet has warmed since the preindustrial era, before the advent of smokestacks and cars.

At least $165 billion. That's how much the US recorded in weather-related damage last year — a total that can't all be blamed on the climate crisis, but has been made worse by a warming world.

This story keeps getting replayed around the world and in people's wallets.

Those costs will only climb if we don't address the climate crisis, economists tell Insider. But in these sometimes-scary numbers, there are is also opportunity — a chance to remake the global economy into one that's far more resilient and in which the climate isn't blowing holes in our wallets.

The ultimate goal, Amir Jina, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, told Insider, should be to create a world where "climate or weather is a problem as boring as plumbing."

But to get there, we'll need to spend a lot of money up front and be real about the climate costs we're already paying — even if we don't always notice them.
The full costs of extreme weather are often hidden

The biggest fires, floods, and heat waves tend to draw headlines. But for years, the more subtle effects of extreme weather had gone pretty much unnoticed. That's changing.

Research over the past decade has exposed the wider-ranging fallout from wild weather. It's been linked to poorer health and higher mortality, of course. Yet extreme weather is also linked to costs like lower productivity at work, reduced crop yields, and worse mental health. It's also tied to an increased risk of suicide, and higher rates of property crime, murder, rape, and civil unrest.

In short, "How's the weather?" is becoming an increasingly important question. Weather extremes put a strain on society, and that leaves the social safety net to pick up the slack.

"The science on this in the past 10 years has just shown that even in the wealthiest countries, we are very much susceptible to exposure to weather, heat, disasters, etc. in a way which we probably thought we could adapt our way out or spend our way out of," Jina said.

One study looking at the cost of hurricanes between 1979 and 2002 found that about a decade on, the storms cost about tenfold more than the initial amount spent on disaster relief. Those costs, the study found, were hidden in local budgets, in spending on social programs, and in insurance payouts.

People in Tarpon Springs, Florida, had to evacuate their homes after Hurricane Idalia inundated the area over the summer.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

All of these sleeper effects cost money. And that has to come from somewhere. This "affects the taxes, it affects health insurance, and many other costs that we pay towards the running of the government, and it spreads down across the economy," Jina said.

"There's almost no sector of the economy that people have looked at where we haven't seen a negative effect — particularly of heat," he added.

Still, for many of us, unless we get hit with a big event, we don't always notice when we encounter these costs.

"You could pick up the shadow of extremely hot days on people's incomes at the end of the year," Jina said. "There's this incremental increase in costs that people are facing, where no one in the US, or no one in the world, is truly insulated from the economic consequences of climate change."

As climate disasters rise, social safety nets start to strain

The steepest cost of extreme weather can't be measured in dollars and cents: People are dying, losing loved ones, and forgoing livelihoods.

Yet, for now, governments can offset many of the most acute financial costs of catastrophic events by drawing on emergency funds and letting some of the bills fall to private insurance.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a similar type of catastrophe, Creon Butler, the director of the global economy and finance program at the London think tank Chatham House, told Insider.

Even though the crisis brought enormous costs, many governments managed to shell out enough money to insulate their populations from the worst economic pain, he said.

Record-high temperatures hit Phoenix over the summer.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Those safety nets and economic buffers will likely start to strain and fail in a warmer world, Butler said, as catastrophes become more common.

Just look at property insurance.

"Insurance only works if the frequency of events doesn't change," Butler said. In a world where extreme weather becomes the norm, "private insurance won't be able to cope with that."

At first, your premiums might start growing so that insurers can keep making a profit, Jina said. Down the line, insurers might decide to pull out of a market entirely. That's already happening in parts of the US.

As the government starts shouldering more of the relief costs, taxes could go up and spending on other priorities like health or education could go down.

"It begins to then raise the question, can the government constantly protect its public?" Butler said. "And the answer is probably no."

Economies lose out if they don't control climate change

Economists haven't agreed on exactly how much climate change will cost in the future, though they do tend to share the sentiment that unless we limit emissions fast, these costs are going to be very difficult to deal with.

"Each new piece of information we learn is showing that the problem is actually worse than we thought," Jina said.

One 2017 paper by Jina and his colleagues, which takes into account climate disasters and the growing effect of extreme weather on society, provides a sneak peek at how much the warming climate could cost the US by the end of the century.

Smoke from Canadian wildfires turned the sky orange over New York City during the summer.

ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

It found that if little effort is made to control emissions — meaning temperatures rise by about three to six degrees Fahrenheit — these costs could strip about 2% to 5% off of the US gross domestic product every year between 2080 and 2099.

If that estimate proves right, the economy "is probably still going to be growing," but the price of climate change will compound year over year to enormous, avoidable costs, Jina said.

"If we think about the future — even very conservatively — the benefits of mitigation always outweigh the costs," he said.

This situation could be made worse by a looming financial "mega shock," which could arise as more people wake up to the reality of the climate crisis, Butler said.

Investors could suddenly pull out of markets, developing countries could quickly lose access to international financial markets, and people could demand governments bring in rapid policy changes as they see the weather get worse, Butler forecasted in a blog post.

All of this means the longer people take to realize drastic action is needed, the more abrupt the transition will be. And economies aren't very good at dealing with rapid change.
Mitigation and adaptation are going to be expensive, but they'll pay off

There's now a "golden hour" to limit the worst of the effects of climate change and reach the best scenario available today, Jina said.

A woman inspects the damage on Pine Island Road, Florida, after the passage of Hurricane Ian.

Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Unfortunately, historic emissions mean that some of the effects of the climate crisis are inevitable, per Jina.

That means some will need to relocate and pricey infrastructure will need to be built to protect others from harsher environments. Countries will also need to invest to slow the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by moving away from fossil fuels and investing in measures to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.

But those measures won't come cheap.

The Biden administration has already earmarked $52 billion to tackle the climate crisis for 2024. That's likely not enough. Demand for climate spending could make for difficult economic times, Butler said.

"We've got lots of priorities in terms of social care, general health, retirement, and so on. But none of that makes much sense unless you are actually protecting your public," said Butler. "And governments are going to have to choose."
With effort, the climate crisis could be made "boring"

Despite a long list of worries, there's reason for optimism: Climate change has never been so visible, and it's never been higher on the political agenda of government and international meetings, Jina and Butler said. At the same time, the price of renewable energy has dropped much faster than many analysts predicted.

Both Jina and Butler said it's wrong to see the spending going to the net-zero transition as a loss. Instead, they said, we should see it as a necessary investment to build a sustainable and climate-resilient economy.

"We currently have a system, both an energy system and an economic system, where we are quite susceptible to fluctuations in climate, where we are quite susceptible to big disasters, because of an interlinked economy," Jina said. "I would like a transition to an energy economy, facing this global energy challenge that we have, where this just becomes a completely boring issue."

Jina points to how countries brought down the death toll from diarrheal diseases by rolling out plumbing. That initial investment must have seemed huge, yet now we reap the benefits of that infrastructure without even thinking about it, even though stomach bugs are still around.

In the same way, a future economy could mean that thanks to clever adaptation policies, people are able to thrive in spite of an inevitable rise in climate extremes.

"Everything is taken care of. We don't have to talk about it. It's not politically contentious, and people aren't dying," Jina said of this future economy.

Jina and Bulter said most economists agree investment in mitigation and adaptation today will be paid back many times over by the end of the century.

There could be short-term benefits to this investment, according to the UN. For instance, cleaner air could save global economies $1.2 to $4.2 trillion by 2030 by reducing pollution. The transition to renewable energy could create up to 24 million jobs by 2030, compared with an estimated 6 million that could be lost, the UN reported.

As of now, however, only four countries — Botswana, Denmark, Namibia, and the UK — are on track to meet zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050, per the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization.

"We're at this point where we could shift pretty dramatically. That really involves people raising their voices and people realizing there might be some short-term pain," Jina said.

Business Insider