They may share the same initials, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Civilian Climate Corps” is no Great Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps. The Bronx representative and her Green New Deal pal, Massachusetts Democrat Senator Ed Markey, are pushing for $70 billion to create their version of the CCC via a reconciliation package. “The last time the US did this, we employed 2M people and had record success in wildfire suppression,” AOC asserted. “One [of] the most rapid peacetime mobilizations in US history. We can revive it to fight climate change.”

What AOC and Markey envision with their CCC is the hiring of 1.5 million young people to “complete federally-funded projects that help communities respond to climate change and transition to a clean economy.” Completely re-engineer the economy is more like it. Their program would include a bunch of taxpayer-provided handouts, such as “childcare, eldercare and tax-free educational grants.” Call us crazy, but that doesn’t sound like fighting climate change; it sounds like the usual grab bag of leftist income redistribution.

Of course, the Left’s great bogeyman, climate change, is the perfect “crisis” to serve as a vehicle for other Democrat agenda items like “racial injustice” and “income inequality.” To the Left, the only “solution” to such a “crisis” is more government. “Our government has an opportunity to equitably reimagine an idea from the past and tailor it to meet the present and the future,” Markey insisted.

However, unlike the CCC of the 1930s, the “corpsmembers” demographic would be manipulated to ensure a “just and equitable” group where language is strictly policed to promote “explicit antiracist language,” Big Labor is prioritized, and “tribal sovereignty” is protected. AOC and Markey aim to create an army of “woke” young climate activists earning upwards of $50,000 annually — and all on the taxpayers’ dime, and all with the express purpose of transforming the U.S. economy into Green New Deal socialism and ecofascism.