Climate Corps to hire people to fight climate change

Elise Schmelzer, Tribune News Service

Chainsaws buzzed as members of a saw crew cut down an invasive Russian olive tree that had been sucking precious water and nutrients from the High Line Canal in Aurora, Colorado. The crew members are some of the first participants in the new American Climate Corps — a federal effort by the Biden administration to put young people to work to address the effects of climate change. In its first year, nearly 900 corps positions are based in Colorado. None in the crew of 18- to 24-year-olds who are employed by Mile High Youth Corps had wielded chainsaws before this summer. That didn’t deter 21-year-old crew leader Alex Dills. He joined the corps because he wanted a job where he could work outside on parks and trails before completing his degree in economics and math at the University of Denver, and then working a desk job.

“I get to go out and make a tangible difference,” Dills said. The American Climate Corps is modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps created by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 to help wrest the country out of the Great Depression. Over nine years, the 3 million young men who joined the Civilian Conservation Corps replanted forests, built thousands of miles of roads and trails, and constructed much of the infrastructure for the country’s national parks. It was an achievement sometimes called the single greatest conservation program in the United States. A conservation corps crew built Red Rocks Amphitheatre, mostly without the aid of heavy machinery.

The American Climate Corps aims to employ 20,000 young people nationwide to tackle a range of projects, including forest management, building weatherization and educating people about sustainability.

The paid, term-limited positions provide job training and, in some cases, a streamlined pathway to federal jobs or money toward college. Program lengths vary, from a few months to more than a year. The first members were sworn in last month. In Colorado, the launch of the federal program was aided by the already existing Colorado Climate Corps, established in 2021. Colorado’s program helped inspire the federal one, Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera said, and now 13 states have climate corps.

“We have a friendly debate with California on who was the first to launch a climate corps,” she said. “It’s nice that Colorado is a national leader.” The Colorado Climate Corps, AmeriCorps — another federal service agency — and local partners, such as the Mile High Youth Corps, will implement the new federal program in the state. As of this week, there were 889 available American Climate Corps positions based in Colorado and 73% were filled, according to data provided by the governor’s office.

Many of the current American Climate Corps openings in Colorado are on the Front Range, with more than half of job postings based in Denver. Other positions are based in Hotchkiss, Hesperus and Jamestown. The job duties vary widely, from helping Denver students become more environmentally literate to a six-month program learning climate-resilient farming techniques in southwest Colorado.

Many of the jobs’ equivalent hourly wages are less than the state minimum wage of $14.42 or Denver’s $18.29. Pay ranges from $12.25 an hour for a Denver position to $20 for a position in Hesperus, west of Durango. But many of the jobs, instead of paying a typical hourly wage, provide a living stipend every two weeks, along with a package of other benefits. The pay sometimes is below the minimum wage because some positions, like those created through AmeriCorps, are considered volunteer positions, and therefore do not have to comply with such requirements. Federal agencies also are not required to abide by state and local minimum wage laws.

The low pay has not hurt Colorado Climate Corps’ ability to recruit, said John Kelly, executive director of Serve Colorado, which administers the Colorado Climate Corps and AmeriCorps programs in the state. The Colorado Climate Corps program generally has been easier to recruit for than others, he said, chalking it up to general interest in climate and conservation among young people. That’s why Ian Woon joined the Mile High Youth Corps’ conservation program. Woon, 19, is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in ecology but noticed that many jobs require fieldwork experience. They saw the corps position as a way to gain experience while still in school.

The federal program will help the state expand its Climate Corps programming and funding, Kelly said. Mile High Youth Corps members traveled to Washington in April to speak to national leaders and celebrate the launch of the American Climate Corps, said the organization’s CEO, Kia Abdool. The rollout of the national program will benefit already-established programs like Mile High Youth Corps by providing better visibility, Abdool said. While people may think of rural areas and parks as targets for conservation work, she said, urban areas also have conservation and climate needs.