President Joe Biden wants you, the American taxpayer, to spend $8 billion for his American Climate Corps in his FY 2025 budget.
Remember the Peace Corps? President John Kennedy created it in 1962 to send young idealistic volunteers, many of whom wanted to avoid the military draft to fight in Vietnam, to foreign countries to assist in education, health care and community development such as building shelter and finding clean water.
Remember the Civilian Conservation Corps? The CCC was a key component of the New Deal proposed by President Franklin Roosevelt to put men back to work during the Great Depression. Anytime a person drives on the curvaceous Blue Ridge Parkway, they are riding on roads and bridges built by these men almost a century ago.
Both of these programs at least had some modicum of higher-order purpose and mission built into them. The American Climate Corps, no doubt birthed in the utopian and impractical minds of people such as socialist Bernie Sanders, has all the markings of a federal program destined for failure while wasting $8 billion in federal tax dollars and opening the door for regulatory abuse for decades to come.
Consider the distinct possibility this $8 billion could be spent for political purposes first and environmental protection perhaps a distant second. Up to 50,000 young ideological environmental activists could be hired to fan out over the country in the expansion of the Climate Corps, according to the White House. Saul Levin, the legislative and political director at the Green New Deal Network, said: “We’ll say this again and again — hundreds (of positions) is not enough…We’re talking about a country on fire. We’re talking about people not being able to breathe the air outside. So the scale needs to be dramatically ramped up.”
Maybe “Moderate Joe” is trying to show his moderate side as if he still had one. We may have to consider ourselves lucky ― Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wanted to hire 1.5 million Climate Corp activists. The CCC “only” put three million men back to work in the 1930s.
The EPA would be the agency overseeing the Climate Corps from their environmental justice community grant programs. The EPA has legal authority to sue or fine any person or business they deem as being “dangerous” to the environment.
Does this sound like a benign effort to help poor people pay for new air filters for their HVAC systems? Based on this administration’s propensity to use the heavy hand of federal litigation, regulation and penalties to punish private citizens and companies, this sounds like a way to hire 50,000 ideological college grads to go door to door to report on people not turning off their lights or running their gasoline engines too long to warm up on a cold morning.
Wouldn’t it be better if all these smart young people were taught in college how to invent new ways to control pollution of every kind? Technological innovation; research and development and entrepreneurial risk-taking in the private sector have always proven to be the best way to save the planet, not pass a lot of unenforceable laws.
Thomas Edison’s invention of the electric light bulb almost single-handedly wiped out the use of dirty, smelly and dangerous open-fire kerosene lamps in a matter of years. In 1879, Edison wrote: “We are striking it big in the electric light, better than my vivid imagination first conceived. Where this thing is going to stop Lord only knows.”
Willis Carrier invented the first central air-conditioning system in 1902 which not only made working conditions bearable for the printing company he was working for but also cleaned the air while doing so. Mortality rates the world over plummeted when air conditioning was introduced, and heat-related illness and death fell precipitously.
If the Biden administration and the green energy community were truly serious about clean energy, they would support one thing before he ― please Lord ― leaves the White House in January: rescind all federal restrictions against nuclear power plant construction.
Westinghouse can build small nuclear energy facilities for $1 billion apiece due to amazing technological innovation since 1945. Once the construction costs are amortized, the variable cost is minimal, which means your home energy bill could fall dramatically and the cost of juicing up your EV car might be pennies per charge. The next president and Congress could pass an all-out domestic nuclear energy construction program on day one and our air will be cleaner; energy costs will be dramatically lower and the economy will explode in a new wave of economic expansion we have not seen in decades.
Nothing could be more annoying than an army of American Kiddie Climate Corps activists monitoring every neighborhood for energy violations. That should be reason enough to consciously not give your assent to Joe Biden by voting for him for another four dismal years.
