A federal climate jobs program could hire 20,000 workers this year [Video]

President Joe Biden this month made climate jobs a major focus of his reelection bid.

In his State of the Union address, Biden said he wanted to expand the American Climate Corps, which is modeled after a New Deal-era program that hired millions of men to conserve public lands, forests, and parks.

He followed the speech with an $8 billion budget request to Congress this week to boost the climate-jobs training program to 50,000 workers through 2031. The administration plans to launch the American Climate Corps this summer with about 20,000 workers, but the funding is pieced together from various federal agencies.

Biden’s actions are aimed at shoring up the votes of young people worried about the climate crisis, as well as closing the green-skills gap. Young people turned out for Biden in 2020 but have since blasted the administration’s decisions to approve oil drilling in the pristine Alaskan wilderness and a gas pipeline in Appalachia. These prospective voters are also the target …