Experts Tell Biden: Your Climate Goals Require a Carbon Price

The National Academies published a comprehensive list of policies the U.S. can enact to transform the energy system and right historical inequality.

By Eric Roston & Leslie Kaufman, Bloomberg News, Feb. 4, 2021

Meeting the climate goals of President Joe Biden will require setting a national cost for carbon pollution and spending heavily on social programs to assist Americans hurt by the clean-energy transition. Those are the findings in a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the latest group to lay out a detailed strategy for making the U.S. economy carbon-neutral by 2050.

The goal to be carbon-neutral by mid-century — which the global scientific community says is the only way to avert the worst effects of climate change — has been widely embraced in the private sector and by nine of the top 10 biggest economies, including the U.S. Yet 30 years is very little time to wind down and replace an energy system that's taken generations to build. Urgent steps and market signals are needed, the report said, such as a mechanism to place a price on carbon emissions.

“The big difference between this and any previous report is the attention paid to the social connections to the equity and diversity, and community worker-protection issues,” said Stephen Pacala, committee chair and a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University. “The report was specifically created to have a full representation of the social dimensions of a transition like this. At least half of our policy recommendations are in that camp.” One of their suggestions is to establish a White House Office of Equitable Energy Transitions to develop criteria to ensure that energy transition funds are equitably shared so that historically marginalized communities can benefit from new jobs and low-cost net-zero energy.

Federal officials are at the receiving end of several firehoses of expertise specifying what, exactly, needs to be done to put the U.S. economy on a climate-safe footing by mid-century. 

There’s a map of what federal agencies should do. There’s a database of job-creating policy ideas. Princeton researchers in December illustrated five decarbonization scenarios for the 2020s that could leave the U.S. well-positioned to meet the world’s science-driven mid-century deadline. There’s “quiet climate policy,” whose clean investments steadily pay off at epic scale. A research team concluded last month that the U.S. “can reach zero emissions without requiring changes to behavior. Cost is about $1 per person per day, not counting climate benefits.” The Decarb America project today reported that its incremental cost estimates “are small relative to the projected size of the U.S. economy, constituting only 0.4-2.2% of GDP,” compared with 5% to 10% for the volatile traditional energy system.

Above all, time is of the essence: An analysis published Wednesday by Energy Innovation Policy & Technology LLC, a nonpartisan energy and environmental policy research firm, concludes that delaying decarbonization from today until 2030 would raise the overall cost of energy capital, operations, and fuel by 72%. The time-crunch forces industries to make more draconian changes more quickly, including more aggressive pushes, for example, into building efficiency and expensive technologies that captures CO₂ directly from air. 

The new National Academies report argues that carbon pricing, the politically unpopular idea of taxing emissions or requiring permits, is an important step to meet the 2050 goal. It is also not enough. The authors, drawn from numerous fields of research and experience, also compiled a list of emissions-reduction policies that include electrifying vehicles and appliances. These technological  accomplishments must be matched with complementary efforts to ensure that the energy transition isn’t too hard on any U.S. communities, particularly historically marginalized and poor areas.

Yet slashing emissions requires more than a technical transition, the report suggests. The report calls for the creation of a National Transition Corporation to manage problems like possible job loss and equitable access to economic opportunities created by infrastructure development. It estimates the cost at $20 billion over 10 years, which would require Congressional approval.

The National Academies emphasized just how critical the next 10 years are for government action. To reach carbon neutrality, industry and the private sector will have to electrify. That's why it's so urgent, the report says, for the government to invest heavily in systems that will allow the rest of society to follow suit.

The report outlines the immense technical challenges to achieving the basic milestones for decarbonizing in a timely manner. For example, Biden says he wants to decarbonize the U.S. electric grid by 2035. The academies suggest that the grid needs to be 75 percent carbon free by 2030. But to achieve that, they note, “would require an average pace of wind and solar installation that each year matches or exceeds the record historical yearly deployment of these technologies.” And that pace would have to accelerate every year from 2025 to 2030. 

 But the biggest challenges may be the policy imperatives that need bipartisan support to implement. There is currently little political appetite on either side of the aisle for a carbon tax starting at $40 per ton as suggested by the report — which is still below data-driven estimates of what every ton of CO₂ costs society. Carbon pricing would likely take an act of Congress, as would the academies’ suggestion that the Department of Energy set manufacturing standards to achieve close to 100 percent all-electric appliances by 2050.

Americans Are Moving To Escape Climate Impacts. Towns Expect More To Come

By Annie Ropeik, National Public Radio/New Hampshire Public Radio, Jan. 22, 2021

The impacts of climate change could prompt millions of Americans to relocate in coming decades, moving inland away from rising seas, or north to escape rising temperatures.

Judith and Doug Saum have moved already, recently leaving their home outside Reno, Nev.

"It was with a view of the Sierra [Nevada Mountains] that was just to die for," Judith says. "We had a lot of friends, musician friends, we'd get together and play music with them often. It wasn't easy to leave all that."

The Saums had long thought about retiring to Colorado or Montana to be near family. But as they started making those plans several years ago, they were also noticing a new problem: Wildfire season was getting worse and longer in their part of the country, fueled by climate change.

"For me, it was unbearable because I was so sensitive to the smoke that I start to swell up," says Judith. "I get sinus infections, and going outside was intolerable."

The Saums settled on northern New England and a house in the rural town of Rumney at the foot of New Hampshire's White Mountains.

Doug Saum says they call themselves climate migrants.

"We had the idea ... not necessarily that we were going to a place that would be forever untouched by climate change, but that we were getting out of a bad climate situation that was only likely to get worse," he says.

For others, climate-related hazards will be just one reason to move. Bess Samuel says her family has wanted to leave Huntsville, Ala., for a less conservative place for a while — and rising temperatures and power bills could seal the deal.

"I feel like I have to be realistic — this is as good as it's going to get for a while," Samuel says. "We keep hearing these things ... it's the hottest summer and it's the hottest summer and that trend doesn't seem to be reversing."

Jola Ajibade studies climate migration as an assistant professor at Portland State University in Oregon.

"Impermanence might be the new normal for many of us," she says. "The idea that you have to live in one place forever, I think people have to forget that... And I think people who have been able to do that historically, I think it's a privilege that they should celebrate."

But she says all this moving around can make people resilient. And if the places that will receive these new residents can be resilient and flexible, too, the communities might just benefit from it.

Pandemic influx shows the need to plan

"When we've talked about climate migration, it usually comes up in the context of the jobs that we just can't fill," says Sarah Marchant, the community development director in Nashua, N.H.

Nashua has already seen its Puerto Rican population grow after Hurricane Maria hit the island, and it expects more climate migrants from Boston and other nearby coastal areas.

"I think the city is well-positioned with the infrastructure we already have, and our location that is very desirable," Marchant says. "We are an hour from Boston, a little over an hour from the Seacoast and two hours to the mountains, and so we are connected to everything."

By some measures, Nashua's region could be an ideal climate haven. It's getting warmer, but it doesn't face the existential threats of, say, Florida from hurricanes and flooding or California from wildfires and smoke. Northern New England is also one of the oldest and whitest parts of the country and has struggled with population loss.

But it's hard to predict the scale and timing of climate migration. And an influx of newcomers during the current pandemic is showing just how disruptive unplanned growth can be.

"An increase in traffic, people getting evicted, a lack of hospital beds because there's more people – these are the kinds of things that create tension," says Anna Marandi, a senior climate specialist with the National League of Cities. "When the systems aren't set up properly in advance to hold more people, then the existing population can get resentful."

So Sarah Marchant says Nashua is keeping migration and other climate impacts in mind while tackling existing problems with affordable housing and overstretched infrastructure. The idea is "to ensure that what we are building is sustainable," she says, and to "be smarter about what we do have."

Whether or not the climate migrants come, she says Nashua is making improvements that will benefit everyone.

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/22/956904171/americans-are-moving-to-escape-climate-impacts-towns-expect-more-to-come

Survey Finds Majority of Voters Support Initiatives to Fight Climate Change

A survey carried out after the November election found that 66 percent of respondents said that developing sources of clean energy should be a high or very high priority.

By John Schwartz, The New York Times, Jan. 15, 2021

A majority of registered voters of both parties in the United States support initiatives to fight climate change, including many that are outlined in the climate plans announced by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., according to a new survey.

The survey, which was conducted after the presidential election, suggests that a majority of Americans in both parties want a government that deals forcefully with climate change instead of denying its urgency — or denying that it exists.

In the survey, published Friday by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, 53 percent of registered voters said that global warming should be a high or very high priority for the president and Congress, and 66 percent said that developing sources of clean energy should be a high or very high priority.

Eight in 10 supported achieving those ends by providing tax breaks to people who buy electric vehicles or solar panels, and by investing in renewable energy research.

“These results show there’s very strong public support for bold, ambitious action on climate change and clean energy,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, who heads the Yale program. That suggests an opening for bipartisan legislation backed by lawmakers’ constituents.

During the campaign, Mr. Biden spoke often about how his proposals would generate jobs, and the survey indicates broad support for that idea, and not just in the jobs that would come with creating renewable energy.

Of those polled, 83 percent said they supported creating a jobs program that would hire unemployed coal workers, shut down old coal mines safely, and restore the natural landscape. The same percentage said they supported a jobs program that would shut down the thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells around the nation, which pollute water and leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Some of the policies that appear in the survey echo Mr. Biden’s campaign points closely, including support among 78 percent of those surveyed for setting stronger vehicle fuel efficiency standards and 67 percent support for installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations across the United States by 2030.

The nation is still divided politically, of course, with higher levels of support for some of the initiatives among Democrats than Republicans. The percentage of liberal Democrats who said that global warming should be a high or very high priority stood at 86 percent; among conservative Republicans, the figure was just 12 percent, and among all Republicans, that figure was closer to 23 percent.

While 93 percent of liberal Democrats said they thought developing sources of clean energy should be a high or very high priority for the president and Congress, just 32 percent of conservative Republicans did; among all Republicans, however, the figure was 43 percent — and 58 percent among liberal and moderate Republicans.

An incentive program promoting renewable energy might gain support from conservatives seeking energy independence or economic development, Dr. Leiserowitz, said, even if they may not be as deeply concerned about addressing climate change. “There are many roads to Damascus,” he said.

The Green New Deal, a package of progressive proposals for fighting climate change that has been heavily attacked by conservatives, got the support of 66 percent of those polled, a lower figure than many of the specific proposals discussed in the survey. Mr. Biden has declined to support the Green New Deal specifically, though his campaign called it a “crucial framework” for climate action.

Some of the signature initiatives of the Trump administration proved to be deeply unpopular with the public, especially the effort to promote drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska: Only 28 percent of voters favored it. Just 40 percent supported drilling for and mining fossil fuels on public lands, and 47 percent supported expanding U.S. offshore oil and natural gas drilling.

As for the Paris climate agreement, which Mr. Trump abandoned with great fanfare, 75 percent of American voters said they wanted the nation back in. And while Mr. Trump heralded his aggressive efforts to relax energy efficiency standards for home appliances like dishwashers and light bulbs, 83 percent of the voters in the survey said they supported more energy-efficient appliances.

The fact that interest in climate issues is so strong, considering the proliferation of crises that include the coronavirus pandemic and its attendant economic woes, and the months of unrest over racism, is impressive, Dr. Leiserowitz said. In part it might be attributed to increased media coverage and events like the very active wildfire and hurricane seasons last year.

“For most people, until recently, climate change has been an abstract issue,” he said.

The survey of 1,036 registered voters was conducted between Dec. 3 and Dec. 16 and has a margin of error of three percentage points.

Dr. Leiserowitz said that the support for government action to get the nation moving toward a clean-energy future, even among conservative Republicans, showed a shift in American political thinking.

“We are in a fundamentally different political climate today than when we lived in the 1980s and ’90s,” he said.

This survey suggests that Americans accept the idea that “the free market alone is not going to solve people’s problems,” he said. “It takes a strong government to fix these problems.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/climate/climate-change-survey.html?searchResultPosition=2

Cambridge, MA is first place in US to have climate warning labels at gas pumps

Cambridge, the home of Harvard and MIT, passed a city ordinance in January requiring the signs at gas station fuel pumps

By Louise Boyle, The Independent, Dec. 31, 2020

Health and environmental warning labels on the dangers of fossil fuels will be required for the first time in the US at gas pumps in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The bold yellow stickers are intended to make clear the connection to customers between filling up their vehicles and the climate crisis.

The cigarette packet-style label reads: “Warning - Burning Gasoline, Diesel and Ethanol has major consequences on human health and on the environment including contributing to climate change.”

Cambridge, the home of Harvard and MIT, passed a city ordinance in January requiring the signs at gas stations.

A spokesman for the city told The Independent: “The City of Cambridge is working hard with our community to fight climate change. Since burning fossil fuels to power our automobiles is a big part of the cause, we know that we have to convert to less polluting transportation and replace gasoline and diesel with renewable energy. 

"The gas pump stickers will remind drivers to think about climate change and hopefully consider non-polluting options.”

An example of the label was tweeted by environmental campaigners Beyond The Pump who said that Cambridge will roll out the stickers by the end of the year.

Although the signs are in a hard-to-miss shade of yellow, they do not include anything similar to the striking images attached to cigarette packets. Environmental campaigners have put forward ideas of climate labels including burning forests and other catastrophes caused by global heating.

An estimated 43 per cent of emissions in Massachusetts come from transportation. Personal vehicles cause a large portion of those emissions, Cambridge officials said. 

At the beginning of 2020 Governor Charlie Baker said that Massachusetts would go beyond the 80 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 that is required by law, and set a goal of net-zero emissions.

Transportation accounts for 28 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in the US, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The emissions come primarily from burning fossil fuel for cars, trucks, ships, trains, and planes.

James Brooks, founder of Think Beyond the Pump, wrote in an op-ed earlier this month that warning labels are “intentionally disruptive”.

“The goal is to create a social norm around gassing up and put public pressure on consumers to find ways to reduce emissions. Of course, there is some guilt involved; drivers get the message, and they know everyone else gets it, too. That forces drivers to recognize they’re part of the problem. It creates a sense of accountability,” he wrote.

An attempt for similar labels in Berkeley, California, was unsuccessful, while Sweden made climate warning labels mandatory on gas pumps in May.

The British Medical Journal earlier this year advocated for the policy  but noted its potential downfalls.

“
In North Vancouver, Canada, pictorial designs denoting biodiversity loss were ‘co-opted’ by the Canadian fuel industry and incorporated into a national ‘Smart fuelling’ initiative, with any threats to health omitted,” a report noted.

In August, Extinction Rebellion activists stuck tens of thousands of labels on petrol pumps across the UK to highlight the threat of the climate crisis.

Some of the more than 20,000 stickers printed out by the group include references to the Covid-19 coronavirus, stating air pollution may “increase your risk”, while others play on the government’s maligned mid-lockdown slogan “Stay alert, control the virus, save lives” - replacing the phrase with a call to “control pollution”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/gas-warning-climate-change-cambridge-b1779687.html

Climate Change Legislation Included in Coronavirus Relief Deal

The legislation calls for cutting the use of powerful planet-warming chemicals common in air-conditioners and refrigerators.

By Coral Davenport, The New York Times, Dec. 21, 2020

WASHINGTON — In the waning days of the 116th Congress, lawmakers have authorized $35 billion in spending on wind, solar and other clean power sources while curtailing the use of a potent planet-warming chemical used in air-conditioners and refrigerators.

Both measures, backed by some of the Senate’s most powerful Republicans, were attached to the huge government spending and coronavirus relief package that is expected to head to President Trump’s desk early this week, effectively creating the first significant climate change law since at least 2009.

They amount to a rare party rebuke to Mr. Trump on the issue of global warming, after he spent the past four years mocking and systematically rolling back every major climate change rule. The comity may also signal that while President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is unlikely to secure his full climate plan, he may be able to make some progress in curbing global warming.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, called the effort “the single biggest victory in the fight against climate change to pass this body in a decade.”

Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming and a leading opponent of most climate change policies, also celebrated: “This agreement protects both American consumers and American businesses,” he said. “We can have clean air without damaging our economy.”

Advocates for climate change policy said passage of the climate measures — especially the limits on refrigerants — could signal to the rest of the world that the United States is ready to rejoin the global effort to slow the warming of the planet. The coolant phase-down would be one of the most significant federal policies ever taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to an analysis by the Rhodium Group, a research and consulting firm.

By 2035, the law would help avoid the equivalent of 949 million tons of carbon dioxide, the group estimated, which is similar in scope to the extra expected emissions from Mr. Trump’s climate policy rollbacks on vehicle pollution and methane from oil and gas operations.

Mr. Biden has pledged to enact the most ambitious climate change agenda by a president. On his Inauguration Day he is expected to formally rejoin the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact under which nearly every country agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mr. Trump formally withdrew the United States from the agreement in November. Mr. Biden has also pledged to host a global climate summit in Washington within the first 100 days of his administration.

The bill to cut planet-warming refrigerants “is the most important thing, along with rejoining Paris, that they can show in the first 100 days,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute of Governance and Sustainable Development, a research organization. “This is one of the first exhibits of success.”

The new legislation would require the nation’s chemical manufacturers to phase down the production and use of coolants called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. They are a small percentage of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, compared with carbon dioxide from the fossil fuels that power vehicles, electric plants and factories, but they have 1,000 times the heat-trapping potency of carbon dioxide.

In a 2016 accord signed in Kigali, Rwanda, in the last days of the Obama administration, 197 nations agreed to phase out HFCs in favor of alternatives that are less dangerous to the climate. The Kigali agreement was an amendment to the Montreal Protocol, the landmark 1987 treaty designed to close the hole in the ozone layer.

Once the Kigali amendment is implemented by all nations, scientists say it would stave off an increase of atmospheric temperatures of nearly one degree Fahrenheit. That would be a major step toward averting an atmospheric temperature increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the point at which many experts think the world will be locked into a future of rising sea levels, severe droughts and flooding, widespread food and water shortages, and more powerful hurricanes. But the Trump administration never ratified the Kigali pact, and instead has proposed to roll back federal regulations curbing the use of HFCs in the United States.

Now, Mr. Trump is about to sign a bill that will require the United States to follow the terms of the Kigali agreement, which requires companies to phase down production and consumption of HFCs to about 15 percent of 2012 levels by 2036. The phase-down will be administered by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The chief U.S. negotiators of the Kigali amendment were John Kerry, the former secretary of state, and Gina McCarthy, the former E.P.A. administrator, both of whom have been appointed to be Mr. Biden’s top White House climate advisers.

Even in a Biden administration, it is not certain whether the United States will ratify the Kigali pact, because to do so would require a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate. But the new law would put the United States in compliance, regardless.

“This provides the green light for Kigali to go into action,” said Frank V. Maisano, a principal at the law firm Bracewell, which represents chemical companies.

American chemical companies have actually been among the strongest supporters of the Kigali pact and the HFC bill, because most already manufacture the more climate-friendly HFC replacements and a phaseout would put them at a competitive advantage over manufacturers of the older technology.

Stephen Yurek, the chief executive of the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, an industry group, was in Kigali four years ago to push for the deal. He has spent the past two years lobbying lawmakers on Capitol Hill to enact it into law.

“U.S. companies are already the leaders with the technology that has been developed to replace the less environmentally-friendly refrigerants,” he said. “This bill is a victory for the manufacturers of all these products — not just the refrigerants; the equipment and component manufacturers,” he said.

Mr. Yurek said his industry has also worried that at least eight states have passed laws of their own requiring HFC reductions and creating a patchwork of rules, “which makes it harder for manufacturers.”

The push by industry brought along Senate Republicans, at least 16 of whom signed on as sponsors to the legislation, which was jointly written by Senator Thomas Carper of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana. Mr. Kennedy’s state is home to hundreds of chemical manufacturing facilities; he framed the bill as a job creator for those companies.

“To create thousands of jobs, save billions of dollars and safeguard the environment, we must invest in alternatives to HFCs,” he said.

Environmental groups have chosen to read big things into that Republican support, though it may not materialize around bills roundly opposed by other industries, especially oil and gas companies.

“Voters want action on climate, and even some Republicans want action on climate, and the Republicans leading on this HFC deal are starting to understand that,” said Matthew Davis, legislative director for the League of Conservation Voters.

In addition to the HFC bill, the larger package included a bipartisan renewable energy bill, co-sponsored by Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the chairwoman and ranking Democrat of the Senate Energy Committee.

The bill would not appropriate any new government spending, but it would authorize $35 billion in existing government funding to be spent on clean energy programs over the next five years, including $1 billion for energy storage technology that could serve as batteries for wind and solar power, $1.5 billion for demonstration projects for new solar technology, $2.1 billion for advanced nuclear energy technology and $450 million for technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The bill would also direct federal agencies to update the government programs that oversee renewable energy spending.

“Some of these will be the first updates to these programs since the iPhone was first in use,” said Josh Freed, an energy policy analyst with Third Way, a center-left research organization. “It’s critically important because energy systems looked a lot different 10 years ago. There were almost no EVs on the road, very little solar panels on roofs, Tesla didn’t exist.”

For all the celebratory language, climate change will likely remain a partisan land mine. Mr. Yurek, the lobbyist for the coolant industry, said that he was hesitant to even use the word “climate” when talking about the bill, for fear that Mr. Trump would veto any legislation that is seen as boosting Mr. Biden’s agenda.

“We didn't want to give him any excuse to not sign it,” Mr. Yurek said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/climate/climate-change-stimulus.html?searchResultPosition=1

Young people want to do something about climate change. Biden may have an answer.

By Dino Grandoni (with Alexandra Ellerbeck)

The Washington Post, Dec. 3, 2020

Many young people are eager to tackle climate change. The incoming administration may offer a way to channel that energy.  

An often-overlooked piece of President-elect Joe Biden's climate plan is a proposed program to put people in their late teens and 20s to work safeguarding the country against the effects of global warming.

During the campaign, Biden called for mobilizing “the next generation of conservation and resilience workers through a Civilian Climate Corps.” Now Biden’s allies are beginning to think about what exactly such a program will look like as he prepares to take office next month.

“The reason that I'm excited is that it meets the moment,” said Collin O’Mara, president of the National Wildlife Federation, who worked with Biden’s late son Beau as head of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control and who was one of the first major environmentalists to endorse Biden. “It's a way to solve multiple problems in a very nonpartisan way.”

But the Biden administration will have to contend with a sharply divided Congress, where lawmakers are still struggling to agree on pandemic relief.

A work program that has young people planting trees, restoring wetlands and otherwise helping nature sequester carbon dioxide would help boost the economy weighed down by the coronavirus pandemic and bolster ecosystems battered by fiercer floods and fires, they argue.

Past Democratic presidents have enlisted young people to respond to crises of their day. Franklin D. Roosevelt launched a key part of his New Deal program, the Civilian Conservation Corps, in 1933 to put young men to work during the Great Depression. Three decades later, John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps to exert soft power against Russia in the midst of the Cold War.

Similar conservation programs run by some state governments, including California and New Jersey, help fight forest fires and run hunting programs. And a number nongovernmental organizations run their own corps programs, too.

“Young Americans are more concerned about climate change than any previous generation, and that's in big part because they were born into the daily consequences of climate change,” said Tom Murray, a vice president at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, which runs its own climate corps that places graduate students in local governments and businesses. 

“The interest from young graduate students across the country far exceeds our ability to keep up with them,” Murray said.

“It is absolutely necessary and timely, even before covid-19 and the economic downturn that resulted,” said Mary Ellen Sprenkel, head of the National Association of Service and Conservation Corps, which represents about 135 service programs.

“Young people between 18 and 25, particularly those from low-income and minority communities, have much higher unemployment rates.”

The fate of much of Biden's $2 trillion proposal to cut emissions from the electric and transportation sectors will depend of whether Democrats win two runoff Senate elections in Georgia on Jan. 5.

But Republicans, especially ones with rural constituencies, have gone to bat for similar work programs. 

For example, the Trump administration backed away from shutting down a U.S. Forest Service program called the Job Corps that trains disadvantaged young people after bipartisan outcry in Congress, including from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). 

“There is demonstrable bipartisan support for it,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a Biden confidant. In June, Coons introduced a bill with more than a half-dozen Republican co-sponsors boosting funding for service programs nationwide.

On the other side of the political spectrum, progressive climate activists often point to the Civilian Conservation Corps and the rest of Roosevelt's economic agenda as inspiration for their own Green New Deal proposal.

Biden could stand up a new corps through an executive order — similar to how Kennedy launched the Peace Corps in 1961 and got congressional authorization for it the following year.

By repurposing existing funds, “the potential is there to have to put tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people to work,” O'Mara said, 

But he added, “If you want to have multiple millions go to work, you're going to need congressional appropriations.” 

Plenty of high-quality national service programs focusing on conservation exist across the country, Coons said. He thinks it would make sense for Congress to boost funding of them — both to hire more people and pay them better wages. 

“There is this existing nationwide infrastructure for national service,” he said. “The challenge isn't, do you need to create a whole new infrastructure? It is, can you get the funding?” 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/03/energy-202-young-people-want-do-something-about-climate-change-biden-may-have-an-answer/