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CLIMATE CHANGE
First 100 days has never made sense; climate activists proved that this week
One thousand days into the Biden administration and policy change keeps happening, this time with the launch of a new Climate Corps
When then-candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders formed their Unity Task Force in the summer of 2020, many dismissed it as little more than a show. Sanders was on his way out of the race, and the task force — a team made up of an equal number of Biden and Sanders/Warren policy advisors, charged with writing a consensus policy report for the rest of the campaign — was just a way to secure an endorsement and paper over on differences within the party.
This week, 974 days into his term, Joe Biden proved that wasn’t the case. In doing so, he reinforced why the arbitrary first 100 days in office mark makes so little sense to judge presidents or the success of a activists during a campaign (research, including by Casey Dominguez, does suggest presidents are more successful in Congress in the first 100 days).
To understand the long road to the new plan from the White House, you have to go back to at least the commitments made in the 110-page report that came out of the Unity Task Force, though the underlying idea of a climate corps goes back much further, even to the Great Depression.
And, to understand the work of the Task Force on climate issues, you have to pay attention to the role new interest groups, like the Sunrise Movement, played in its deliberations.
Just a couple of years old at the time of the campaign, thousands of young people had already joined in to advocate for action on climate change and to do…
