Biden Adm. to Train 20,000 in Skills to Fight Climate Change

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, HOST: Well, returning now to the climate crisis. Our next guest tonight is the national climate advisor for the White House. And his job couldn’t be more important right now. With $23 separate billion weather and climate disasters already this year, that is according to the U.S. government. So, what is the White House doing about it? Ali Zaidi joins Michel Martin to discuss.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Bianna. Ali Zaidi, thank you so much for speaking with us.

ALI ZAIDI, WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL CLIMATE ADVISER: It’s good to be here.

MARTIN: So, I wanted to start with a big announcement by the Biden administration. The administration launched the American climate core. It says that the Climate Corps. It says, the Climate Corps is going to put some 20,000 young people on career pathways in growing fields of — the growing fields of clean energy, conservation and climate resiliency. How exactly does this work?

ZAIDI: Yes. We face a massive challenge in the form of the climate crisis. But we also have a massive opportunity. And so, the president has looked at the playbook from the new deal era and is leveraging that playbook here to bring more people into the task of building a cleaner, fairer, more sustainable economy. And really, how it’s going to work practically is we will have created a pathway that has a lower barrier to entry. 20,000 folks just in the first recruitment class, that’s our goal for next year. And with no experience necessary. So, this will be the way folks from a variety of backgrounds get suited up into careers into clean energy at a time when we desperately need them.

MARTIN: Well, give me a sense of like how it works. Is it like the Peace Corps where you — you know, you sign up, you get — you may have some skills, you may not, but you kind of get the training that you need and then you are kind of deployed in certain places? Is that the idea here?

ZAIDI: Yes. No experience needed. No background necessary. Everybody welcome. And in fact, we’re work doubly hard to make sure this team looks like America. They’ll jump into a training program over the course of a year that pays them as they learn some of the basic skills of being part of the clean energy or conservation or resilience economy. That means, for example, if they’re doing solo, they’re getting comfortable being on a roof, understanding what the equipment is and so on. And of course, after this, they’re going to join, hopefully, an apprenticeship program and continue to deepen their skills. But this is their entry point.

MARTIN: How do you know — can I just stop you there? How do you know there are actually sufficient private sector jobs to employ these people? Are you convinced that once these people are trained, will they have some place to go to use their skills?

ZAIDI: Yes. This is a red-hot job market. We talk to the private sector all the time about the challenges that they face. And the number one topic that comes up when they look out a few years into the horizon is are they going to have the workers needed to do this work? You know, we have hundreds of winds and solar farms being built across the country. Just one of them, which is getting connected to a power line in New Mexico alone is going to provide as much power as the Hoover Dam. So, on a regular basis, now, the United States is in the game of building massive million homes worth of solar and wind farms. We’ve got over 100 clean energy factories announced since the president signed the Inflation Reduction Act and counting. So, the demand is massively expanding. And on the public sector side, we have that demand as well. The Forest Service has an aging and retiring workforce. We need to fill folks into those jobs as well. So, whether it’s nature-based solutions or building these clean energy products, we know there’s a massive, massive demand. We’re hearing it directly from the private sector. This is us responding by building an American Climate Corps that can help us meet the demand.

MARTIN: The original proposal called for some $30 billion to hire — or to put 300,000 people through the program. Is the initial commitment — like 20,000 people sounds like a big number, but is that really enough to make a dent? Is that really enough to make a difference in this market?

ZAIDI: Well, look, the investment that was proposed by Joe Biden was a good idea then, it’s a good idea now. And what the president is committed to doing is taking all the steps that he can through executive authority, not waiting on Congress to act, not allowing us to be stalled out in this decisive decade for climate action. So, should we be scaling it? Should we be growing it? Absolutely. And I think the best way for us to do that is to start getting moving right now. And that first recruitment class is going to help put points on the board, show people how good of a value proposition this is. And we’re going to continue to work with states philanthropy, the private sector and hopefully, with the Congress as well to scale this up over the coming years.

MARTIN: So, let’s look at another administration initiative from a different direction. The Department of Justice is currently involved in a legal battle with a group of young Americans who are actually suing the federal government over its continued use of fossil fuel. And now, the case is Juliana v. the United States. The Department is fighting to keep the case from going to trial. Do you know why the administration is so committed to fighting this case or keeping it from going to trial?

ZAIDI: So, Michel, I can’t comment on litigation. The Department of Justice independently develops its litigation strategy and advances it. I will say is that this administration has not been shy about calling for mobilization, for organizing and for greater political support behind bold and expansive climate action. That’s why the president was able to pass the largest climate bill, not just in American history but anywhere in the whole world. That’s why he continues to use his executive authority to accelerate additional climate action. And he’s been doing it in a way that’s working with and through a broad coalition, urban and rural, young and old organizers of every stripe. So, we’re going to continue to work to build that political case to go faster and faster. We’re implementing the largest climate bill already. And, you know, there’s going to be a lot of roles for a lot of different stake holders to play through various institutions and various Fora to make the case for how we go faster.

MARTIN: OK. So, sort of, again, going at it from a different direction, the administration also announced last week a directive to federal agencies to consider the cost of climate change in their budgets. It’s a policy known as the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases.

ZAIDI: Yes.

MARTIN: I mean, this is something that a lot of people have sort of pushed for for years because it’s considered kind of a part of all of government approach. I mean, the argument is that if this is important, that everybody needs to kind of figure out and sort of calculate what the effects of anything they do is to climate change. If this is kind of an existential threat, then everybody needs to sort of take it accordingly. So, yes. on the one hand, there are a lot of people in the field have called for something like this for a long time. On the other hand, there is still tremendous political opposition to this. I mean, the Shelley Moore Capito, a senator from West Virginia. She’s the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Community, says that these carbon metrics are unproven figures, that the administration is going to use to justify environmental policies that drive up costs for families, that hamstring employers and delay job-creating infrastructure projects from ever moving forward. You know, what about that? I mean, a lot of families are really under stress right now. That’s not a secret. It’s not necessarily, you know, anybody’s fault or even somebody’s fault, but you could argue that the priority now, when people are dealing with like terrible inflation, people’s budget, I mean, even food prices and so forth, you know, all down the line, that that really should be the priority. How would you respond to that?

ZAIDI: Yes. Let’s talk about priorities. We’re an administration that is hosting at the White House a summit with state and local governments about how to boost resilience and respond to these crisis as they’re showing up in communities all across the country. On the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, they’re messing around, trying to shut down the government and will hamstring our emergency management agency, FEMA, from helping with recovery at 2,000 projects all across the country to help rebuild after disasters. So, this is an issue that showed up in our communities we’re try to be for the solutions and we’ve got House Republicans, in particular, who are trying to prevent FEMA from being able to do its job. Let’s talk about consumer costs. The president has been for an aggressive approach to get dollars into the hands of families to help them reduce their home energy costs, but we’ve got some Republican governors who are denying rebate dollars that would help folks like fixed income seniors retrofit their homes and reduce their energy costs. We’ve seen an unprecedented expansion in American energy here in the United States under the president’s leadership but we’ve got folks who are in the House of Representatives who are calling for repeals of tax credits that are literally creating manufacturing jobs in their backyard. So, I think this administration’s priorities are pretty clear and they’re lined up with the American people who have front of mind anxiety about climate, anxiety about whether the United States are going to compete in the global clean energy race. And the president is very focused on delivering results for them.

MARTIN: Well, speaking of — you know, it may be top of mind, but the administration’s initiatives don’t seem to be, I don’t know, understood to be top of mind or they don’t — it doesn’t seem to be that their top of mind with voters. I mean, you know, the president, as you just mentioned, signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law just over a year ago. As you’ve discussed, it has been widely described as the largest investment in clean energy and climate action ever. But according to a “Washington Post” released last month, like 71 percent of Americans have heard little or nothing at all about the package. They say 57 percent of Americans disapprove of President Biden’s handling of climate change. How do you understand that?

ZAIDI: I think folks are looking for us to go faster and faster collectively as a country. I think, you know, polls are an imperfect instrument measuring a point in time where sentiment is. The reality, as I see it, is places like West Virginia where there was a steel plant shuttered, now, it’s turned back on making batteries. There was a sofa capitol of the world manufacturing in Dalton, Georgia, those jobs went away. Now, they’re manufacturing solar. There are countless power plants that went away over the last several decades now being repowered with clean energy. We’re vitalizing communities all across the country. And for the people who are showing up to work at those facilities today, we’ve made a difference. And that impact, that positive impact is rippling through the economy. I think more and more Americans are being able to tap into clean energy solutions and how massively they’re making a difference in their lives. And if you look — if you actually go through the substance of the Inflation Reduction Act, every single line item is off the charts popular with the American people. Dollars to help retrofit. Biden tax credits to make clean-up appliances cheaper. So, these are incredibly popular provisions. I understand in Washington people like to fling, mud around and try to, you know, make one piece of legislation look funnier than the other, but the reality is they’re massively popular provisions, they’re making a massive difference in the lives of American people. And we’re going to keep at the work of delivering results on this work.

MARTIN: It seems as though the International Community on the whole is failing to meet its Paris climate goals by 2030. And in fact, we even see, say, for example, in the U.K., the current prime minister has actually, you know, publicly stated as a matter of policy that he wants to slow down the — his government’s commitment to some of the commitments that had previously been made. Is it still possible that we could prevent 1.5 degrees of warming to blunt the worst effects of climate change?

ZAIDI: Look, anyone who tells you that hitting 1.5 degrees is going to be a lay-up or some sort of an easy exercise is blowing smoke. This is going to be an incredibly challenging and unprecedented thing that we are all going to have to work on together. And by the way, in this decisive decade for climate action, that’s how the IPCC views this time period between now and 2030, we cannot be slowing down. As a country, as the United States, the best thing that we can do is to have an aggressive diplomatic approach that is paired with strong leadership here at home. When the United States shows up to the global stage today, we haven’t just signed ourselves back into the Paris Agreement, we have come back to the table as a leader that is helping not only drive down the cost of clean energy here at home, but the cost of clean energy all around the world. That gives us a great deal of leverage to push for greater action. Take methane, for example. It’s a super polluting greenhouse gas, 80 times worse than CO2, the U.S. set very, very aggressive standards for itself on methane, and that’s why, I think, the president was able to get over 100 countries to join his global methane pledge so that the world can move forward together. So, I’m a perpetual and congenital optimist. That’s how I’m able to work on climate change. And I believe very firmly that this chapter of our history will not be told as a chapter — as a story of gloom and doom, it will be a chapter that’s written as a story of hope and possibilities when we seize this moment, when we came together, when we drove the solutions forward. I think that’s very possible. That is within our reach. The International Energy Agency just yesterday said, it’s possible. We have the technology. We have the pathways. We have the tools. We just need to do the work.

MARTIN: Well, the survey shows that a lot of young people feel a lot of despair about climate. You actually hearing young people say in some surveys, you know, if you them, what do you want to do when you become an adult or do you want to have a family? And young — some young people will actually say, sure, if the world isn’t under water by the time I get to that point, or, sure, if we aren’t, you know, out of water? You know what I mean? I mean, I’m guessing you’ve heard this. So, I’m just — I’m curious, if there are young people who feel that way listening to our conversation, what would you say to them?

ZAIDI: You know, it’s so easy now whether you sign online or you tune in to the television to feel that sense of despair and doom. You see the sky turn orange, you breathe in the smoke from wildfires hundreds of miles away, you see floods wash away lives and memories and livelihoods. It’s really easy to get resigned to a reality that necessarily will keep getting worse. Young people though, I think, have shown us a different path. Just a couple years ago, a number of young people decided to organize, to march, to strike on Fridays and other days. They came out in record numbers and they handed this president not only a shot at trying to do the right thing but a mandate to deliver, and he has. Thanks to their voice, the United States of America went from being on a trajectory to be on the sidelines of climate to have exited the Paris Agreement, to be in the game of denial and skepticism, to have passed the largest climate bill in the history of any country anywhere in the world. That’s because of young people. So, my message everywhere I go is you are powerful beyond how much you realize. You’ve already moved the needle. You’ve helped us unleash incredible economic prosperity. Helped us deliver environmental justice to places that felt it would never come. The work is not done. But, boy, this is not going to be a story that’s told in doom and despair. This is going to be a story that’s told in hope and possibilities because of what young people have already done. We will need the moment.

MARTIN: Ali Zaidi, thank you so much for speaking with us.

ZAIDI: Thank you.