Two long years ago, it appeared that the much-anticipated American Climate Corps was finally happening. President Joe Biden had promised to build a green jobs workforce inspired by the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s most popular New Deal programs, ever since he was on the campaign trail. By September 2024, 15,000 young people had joined the American Climate Corps, according to the administration, working to restore landscapes and install solar panels around the country. It didn’t even last a year. The Biden administration wound down the program last January ahead of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, correctly anticipating that Trump would take a hammer to anything with “climate” in the name. But even as climate change fell off the national agenda and the promise of federal funding vanished, some states have found ways to continue to support Climate Corps-style work over the past year. Their efforts show what’s still politically viable — and under what conditions these initiatives can still succeed — assuming local governments and nonprofits find the funds. One of the survivors is, unsurprisingly, California, a state with many climate-friendly initiatives that have enough resources to survive a federal drought. “We’ve stayed the course and are moving forward full steam ahead, and our climate work hasn’t been impacted by the chaos at the federal level,” said Josh Fryday, who runs GO-Serve, Governor Gavin Newsom’s newly created office for service and civic engagement. The “chaos” Fryday was referring to? Last spring, Elon Musk’s…
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