Editor’s Note: Michael D. Smith is the Chief Executive Officer of AmeriCorps, the federal agency for national service and volunteerism. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion articles at CNN.
“National service, I hope and pray, will help us to strengthen the cords that bind us together as a people.”
Those were the words of President Bill Clinton 30 years ago this week when he signed the National and Community Service Trust Act, formally establishing AmeriCorps. Just a year later, 20,000 Americans took the AmeriCorps pledge to serve. This was the beginning of an unprecedented bipartisan movement of community-driven service and solutions.
Over the course of 30 years, 1.25 million AmeriCorps members have joined the movement, serving and mentoring millions of students, supporting veterans re-entering the workforce, rebuilding homes after disasters, helping preserve endangered Native languages, and offering pathways for justice-impacted Americans – a second chance.
A movement is exactly what it will take to address the greatest rising threat to humanity: a warming climate. President Joe Biden’s newly announced American Climate Corps — an interagency initiative between AmeriCorps, the Departments of Labor, Energy, Interior, Agriculture, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — will take this challenge head-on by training and preparing the American youth for jobs in clean energy and climate resilience.
In 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps (the “CCC”) began putting people to work, from addressing the ravages of the Dust Bowl, a catastrophic drought that devastated farmlands across the prairies, to collectively planting more than three billion trees. The CCC would restore the soil health of farmlands in the Heartland and power the Colorado River by constructing the Hoover Dam. Their work transformed the very landscape of America.
Now, 90 years later, the American Climate Corps will focus not only on climate change, but climate justice. With equity at its core, unlike the CCC, the American Climate Corps will unite Americans in service, provide a pathway to good-paying union jobs and strengthen the economy for all.
President Biden’s American Climate Corps marks a new era for youth-powered climate action in America – to reforest lands, preserve waterways, make urban, rural and tribal communities more climate resilient; and advance energy-efficiency projects. It’s a bold vision for America’s future – one that is necessary.
None of us are immune from the impacts of the climate crisis. Just this past summer, we all experienced historic heat, wildfires, 101-degree ocean temperatures, record flooding and lengthy droughts.
And while a changing climate threatens us all, we know it disproportionately harms communities of color the most.
In Alaska, rising seas force Native communities to relocate away from their traditional homelands. In Rolling Fork, Mississippi, a tornado leveled a predominately Black community. More recently, wildfires devastated Maui, reducing entire neighborhoods to ash. Any strategy to address climate change without an equal emphasis on equity would turn a blind eye on those most closely impacted.
That’s why President Biden called on the American Climate Corps to prioritize environmental justice. Members will represent the diversity of America — a rich mosaic of cultures, backgrounds and identities — because those who feel it most often hold the best solutions.
Everyone deserves a seat — or shall I say, a hard hat — in the American Climate Corps.
One of the first major partnerships under President Biden’s American Climate Corps is between AmeriCorps and the US Forest Service, establishing the new AmeriCorps NCCC Forest Corps. This five-year, $15 million agreement will deploy AmeriCorps members across the country to conserve national forests and grasslands, mitigate and respond to wildfires and reforest carbon-rich landscapes.
This partnership highlights the importance of collaboration across agencies and is a small example of what we can — and will –— take to scale with the American Climate Corps.
AmeriCorps has already been doing this work for years, funding organizations with innovative solutions. We engage 15,000 Americans annually, working to stem the disastrous effects of rising temperatures and extreme weather.
For example, Conservation Legacy, an AmeriCorps grantee, recruits post-9/11 veterans who serve on a new set of frontlines. Their mission: mitigating wildfires in high-risk communities and forests. Through workforce development, this program supports veterans transitioning from military service to civilian life. They provide boots on the ground, battling climate change.
So as we celebrate 30 years of AmeriCorps, we are looking to the future. Not only to the future of service, but to our role in uniting Americans in service across divides to build a sustainable economy that supports every American.
With the American Climate Corps we are expanding what is possible and living up to President Biden’s call “for a new era of national service.” How we come together as one people – one nation – to address the urgent climate crisis that threatens us all will be the lasting legacy of this generation.
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