Hawaii needs a Green Jobs Corps

Hawaii is facing record unemployment levels — the worst in the nation and the worst in U.S. history. How are we going to dig ourselves out of this hole?

A new green jobs program could be a large part of restoring our society and our economy. Like the Civilian Conservation Corps created by President Franklin Roosevelt with the help of a willing Congress in the 1930s, a new Green Jobs Corps could be created with federal leadership, or could be created at the state or county level first.

In fact, the new Biden administration has recently announced plans to create a Civilian Climate Corps Initiative as part of a package of policies to address climate change, energy, resilience and the economy.

This is great news at the federal level and we hope that local and state policymakers are able to tie new green jobs programs in with these federal efforts.

We are promoting a Big Island version of the Green Jobs Corps and hope that this idea can be extended to other islands also.

A new resolution is scheduled to be heard by the Hawaii County Council in February, which would create a Green Jobs Corps that expands upon existing efforts by groups like Kupu that generally offer green jobs for youth but that are expanding to include adults because of the pandemic and massive unemployment among adults.

Read the rest of this post at Civil Beat