A Doomed Solution to a Faux Problem

The Biden Regime just announced the creation of the “American Climate Corps”, formed using the seemingly ever-expanding executive powers. One wonders why the legislative branch even exists, for our presidents don’t seem to think they need it anymore. With this new program, tax dollars will be used to fund efforts related to “fighting climate change”, which is one of the least important issues to voters according to polling. Regardless, it is pitched to “put young people to work fighting climate change”. Thus, one must accept at least the following precepts:

• Man-made climate change exists and is problematic.

• We can fix the aforementioned.

• Fixing this climate change either will not destroy society’s ability to function, or it will, and we accept that consequence.

There’s plenty of falsity and moral dubiousness in all of that, but then the administration clouds the issues entirely by muddling progressive climate change hysterics with legitimate environmentalism:

“The American Climate Corps is a new initiative that will provide the next generation of Americans with job training and service opportunities to work on a wide range of projects that tackle climate change – including 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.”

— White House press release

Let us take just one of those issues. It is true that mismanagement of forests has led to an increase in devastating wildfires, which affects human lives, decreases air quality, and has economic consequences. Yet, there’s no basis by which one can tie that to “climate change”, except if you were an idealogue trying to make every ecological disaster into a talking point. The truth is that leftist regulations have prevented controlled burns, brush removal, and the building of dams, thus creating optimal conditions for those fires to start and spread. The solution is the eradication of those regulations, not merely spending more funds frivolously.

The new program bears a few obvious parallels, including FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps and Barack Obama’s Youth Corps, the former being created with congressional approval.

“Roosevelt proposed a government employment program for unmarried young men called the Civilian Conservation Corps. Its workforce would not compete with established industries, FDR promised, but would instead confine itself ‘to forestry, the prevention of soil erosion, flood control and similar projects.’”

— Tucker Carlson, Ship of Fools

Roosevelt’s project was pitched as providing useful work for the unemployed that would help them to hold onto their self-respect (rather than being on the dole), support their families (who they were required to send most of their earnings to), learn useful skills while performing needed tasks, and prevent those men from becoming part of the growing criminal class. As a result, 650,000 miles of roads, 125,000 public buildings, 75,000 bridges, and 800 airports were built by the program.

Whether one is in favor of FDR’s program or not, Biden’s plan clearly falls short in comparison, even before it has started. Biden’s initiative is an ideological monolith designed to encourage workers in an industry that cannot seem to sustain itself, even with constant government programs, tax breaks, and incentives.

If one wished to create a government program now that was dedicated to giving people necessary skills in areas that are needed throughout American industry, it would look quite different to what is being unleashed.

American industry is in dire shape. We don’t have enough men pursuing the trades. Our schools imply or outright insist that they must go to university and get a desk job of some variety to find fulfillment and be paid well enough to live comfortably. Yet the trade jobs are paying higher and higher wages, partly due to scarcity of workers, and many desk jobs are probably going to be phased out or at least consolidated in an age of AI. We do not have enough plumbers, electricians, road construction workers, carpenters, masons, men who can repair our pipelines, and the like. We’re on the brink of a crisis in this regard, while the administration, in what is at best a tone-deaf response to a perceived need, wants to focus on jobs in environmentalism. Moreover, they want to emphasize those of non-white backgrounds, for such is the modern definition of diverse:

“A major part of the initiative, according to [Biden's national climate adviser] 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.”

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

Thus the program will further aggravate race-based divisions, as it favors people in an unjust manner on account of their race, which is always in disregard of merit.

Biden’s program bears most similarity to Obama’s Youth Corps, which likewise targeted youths for ideological training. Neither program fills the vacancies in society, but they rather fulfill purely political motivations. This is just another way for the administration to appeal to young people with promises and handouts rather than doing anything to reverse our societal trajectory. It is thus similar to the promises to pay their college debt and propositions to further lower the voting age.

We have here another government program designed to force people into paths that ideologues think the people should want, rather than helping people to do what in fact needs to be done. Real restoration of our societal condition would at least require frank acknowledgments about the roles of faith and family in having a culture and restoring purpose to the broken young men and women who have been raised without either.