Giving Compass' Take:

• At Grist, Sierra Garcia calls for a new climate corps to provide sustainability in the environment and workforce as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. 

• What are the all-around benefits of a 21st-century climate corps? How can we learn from the successes and failures of the New Deal to create a sustainable jobs program? What are you doing to support those who've lost their jobs through COVID-19?

• Learn about how you can help fund innovative coronavirus relief efforts.

Across the nation, what typically comes after the pomp and circumstance for high school or college graduates — finding a job — is now a far more daunting prospect. Tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs in recent months, and ending shelter in place orders won’t bring them all back anytime soon.

It’s the perfect moment to create a 21st-century jobs corps, with climate starring front and center.

The concept is hardly original: Putting jobless Americans back to work with projects that need to be done was the goal of dozens of public works programs that were part of the New Deal of the 1930s, including the environmentally focused Civilian Conservation Corps. (Those programs’ legacy is unfortunately marred by their racism and sexism.) More recently, a national jobs program has emerged as a cornerstone of the Green New Deal and a plank of former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s climate platform.

Across the world, other countries have already begun enacting jobs programs to nurse their economies back to health with climate-smart projects. In Pakistan, more than 63,000 workers who lost jobs in the pandemic were reemployed as tree planters in April. And New Zealand, which has made international headlines for one of the world’s most effective COVID-19 responses, is pushing a jobs package focused on rehabbing ecosystems to help people hurting from job losses in New Zealand’s normally bustling tourist sector.

Graduation speeches always urge college students, with their diplomas in hand, to go out into the world and create a better future. A modern jobs program would make that path easy.

Read the full article about a 21st-century climate corps by Sierra Garcia at Grist.