[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 127 (Tuesday, July 20, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S4954]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, on another matter, right now, there is a 
fire burning in Oregon the size of New York City. A heat wave recently 
rolled through the Pacific Northwest that melted power lines and 
cracked roadways in two. Hurricanes and flooding in the East have 
battered one community after the other. Earlier this year, a snowstorm 
engulfed the typically scorching State of Texas and claimed the lives 
of hundreds--hundreds--of people. And, of course, we saw what happened 
in Europe with the flooding.
  These extreme, once-in-a-century weather events are now commonplace. 
The dangers of climate change are here, and they are real. Fighting 
climate change will take not only new technologies and new ways of 
thinking but something more basic: It will take people--people, lots of 
people--working together to fight climate change from the ground up.
  This morning, I joined with my Democratic colleagues from the House 
and Senate to push a bold, new approach to fighting climate change that 
will help create thousands of good-paying jobs in the process: the 
Civilian Climate Corps, CCC.
  The idea at the core of the Civilian Climate Corps harkens back to 
the New Deal, when hundreds of thousands of Americans were put to work 
on conservation and infrastructure projects across the country. During 
the Great Depression, President Roosevelt needed ways to put Americans 
to work and to do it fast, and he found a way to do it while having 
those workers do something enormously productive for their country: 
building public works and dams and bridges and airfields and flood and 
forest-fire prevention.
  The Civilian Conservation Corps, as it was called at the time, was a 
brilliant idea--a success--that should be harnessed once again, this 
time to fight climate change.
  The bottom line: We need a CCC for the 21st century. We can put 
Americans to work on climate and resiliency projects. We can put 
Americans to work on clean energy initiatives across the country. We 
can put Americans to work helping poorer and more disconnected 
communities handle the challenge of climate change. And we can create 
hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs, particularly focusing on the 
poorer communities, the communities of color that have been left out in 
the past.
  The Civilian Climate Corps can be one of the largest employment 
projects and one of the largest environmental projects at the same 
time. I believe the Senate should work to make this a reality this 
year. I believe the CCC, the Civilian Climate Corps, should be one of 
the pillars of the American Jobs and Family Plan. As majority leader, I 
will ensure that CCC will be included in the upcoming budget 
reconciliation package in as big and bold a way as possible.

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