The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Wednesday that it is partnering with AmeriCorps to form the Environmental Justice Climate Corps, an offshoot of the previously announced American Climate Corps aimed at recruiting in low-income areas.
Applications for the program will open early next year, the agency said in a statement Wednesday.
The new program, which will pay participants a living allowance, is part of an effort to recruit Climate Corps members from communities directly affected by the hazards the Climate Corps are trying to address, with the goal of recruiting more than 250 people over three years.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan is scheduled to formally announce the effort alongside AmeriCorps CEO Michael Smith during a panel discussion during Climate Week 2024 in New York, where President Biden spoke Tuesday night.
“Our partnership is the first of its kind in the federal government to expand pathways to environmental justice careers,” Regan said in a statement. “This program will create opportunities for young people through President Biden's American Climate Corps and help people from overburdened communities access and benefit from historic funding secured under the President's Invest in America plan.”
A Climate Corps, modeled after the New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps, was originally included in Biden's proposed “Build Back Better” package but was blocked by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) in late 2021. Democrats including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) then called for such a program to be included in the final Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) bill or for Biden to create such a program through executive action.
One casualty of the 2022 bill's drafting process was that the climate change bill, the largest in U.S. history, was less ambitious than progressive Democrats had hoped for, largely because Manchin was involved in drafting it. But Biden established the bill by executive order in September 2023, and the first members were sworn in in June of this year.
