President Joe Biden is not the only Democrat who wishes to spend more money than humanly possible on unnecessary policies. As proof, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has proposed the creation of a 1.5 million-member “Civilian Climate Corps” funded by the government.
The plan was unveiled last month in the Civilian Climate Corps for Jobs and Justice Act, a bill sponsored by Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts.
“A diverse and equitable group of 1.5 million Americans over five years will complete federally-funded projects that help communities respond to climate change and transition to a clean economy,” a news release from the Democrats said.
“Civilian Climate Corps work will reduce carbon emissions, enable a transition to renewable energy, build healthier and more resilient communities, implement conservation projects with proven climate benefits, and help communities recover from climate disasters.”
The legislation was announced as part of the reintroduction of the Green New Deal.
While most of those might sound like positive developments, they are simply euphemisms for the Democrats’ radical agenda on climate.
While climate change is certainly occurring, it is not the “existential crisis” that the left wishes people to believe. The gradual warming of Earth can have negative effects, but it is not going to end the world as we know it.
Yet in order to pass sprawling legislation like Democrats wish to do, they need to make it a crisis. That’s why Biden administration officials such as “climate envoy” John Kerry go around attempting to strike fear into Americans.
“How many politicians, how many scientists, how many people have stood up and said, ‘This is existential for us on this planet?'” Kerry said in an April interview with NPR.
“Existential. That means life and death. And the question is, are we behaving as if it is? And the answer is no.”
The reason that politicians are not treating climate change as a matter of “life and death” is because it isn’t, at least not in the foreseeable future.
According to The Hill, Kerry suggested in February that the United States has just nine years to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
“The scientists told us three years ago we had 12 years to avert the worst consequences of climate crisis,” he said. “We are now three years gone, so we have nine years left.”
A fact check from The Associated Press found this claim to be misleading at best. While 2030 has been used as a benchmark year by some scientists, it is not the hard cut-off that Kerry implied.
“A report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, drawn from the work of hundreds of scientists, uses 2030 as a prominent benchmark because signatories to the Paris climate change agreement have pledged voluntary emission cuts by then,” the AP reported.
“The date is not a last-chance, hard deadline for action.”
Again, in order to justify spending billions of dollars on climate initiatives, Democrats must make the issue feel pressing. That is exactly what Kerry is attempting to do.
As the left dishonestly presents climate change as an “existential crisis,” AOC has presented her new plan for the Civilian Climate Corps.
The Civilian Climate Corps aims to employ 1.5 million young Americans – putting them to work remediating blight, maintaining our parks and natural lands – and ultimately put them on a path to a long-term career, providing support like student loan relief and child/eldercare.
— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@RepAOC) May 4, 2021
According to Fox News, the plan would cost $10 billion and would add those 1.5 million workers to the government’s payroll in just five years’ time.
“At least 50% of the funding would be reserved for ‘environmental justice’ communities, which would also provide at least 50% of the Civilian Climate Corps members,” it reported. “Another 10% of funding would be reserved for tribal communities.”
Yes, Democrats want to create jobs specifically for areas that they see fit, which of course would include mostly liberal cities.
AOC mentioned Flint, Michigan; Baltimore; New York’s South Bronx; and St. Louis as communities that would benefit from the corps — all of which reside in counties that voted for Biden in 2020, according to an interactive map from The New York Times.
While the left wants to paint this idea as new and progressive, Fox News pointed out that the Civilian Climate Corps is similar to the Civilian Conservation Corps of President Franklin Roosevelt.
“The plan draws inspiration from the New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps, a public relief program established during the Great Depression that gave unemployed young men jobs relating to the conservation and development of government-owned rural lands,” it reported.
While those jobs were not deeply necessary at that time either, they at least helped stimulate the economy during a depression. Today, the United States is on the verge of an economic boom that will follow the artificial downturn caused by the pandemic-related shutdowns.
Before COVID-19, America had one of the best economies the world had ever seen. As the pandemic ends, there is reason to believe that we will quickly get back to that thriving economy.
Despite that, Biden wishes to forward the lie that our economy needs to be completely rebuilt.
Contrary to the Democrats’ claims, pouring money into unnecessary programs such as the Civilian Climate Corps would do nothing but hurt the economy in the long run.
In addition, climate change is not an existential crisis, and we don’t need to spend billions of dollars to stop it. The Democrats’ radical proposals do not fit the level of concern that is appropriate for the situation.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.