Schwarzenegger recruits his own green army

Arnold Schwarzenegger has this week launched a major new programme designed to ensure his plans to cut carbon emissions across the Californian economy will deliver the employment opportunities that have been widely promised.

His new Green Corps initiative will aim get a thousand at-risk youths off the streets and into training schemes and community service programmes, he said.

The scheme will use $10m (£7m) of federal stimulus funding, along with another $10m in public-private partnership money to establish 10 Green Corps centres throughout the state to co-ordinate the training programmes. The initial funding is intended to keep the scheme operational for 20 months.

The Green Corps scheme follows last September's signing of the AB 3018 legislation, which established a Green Collar Jobs Council – an inter-departmental initiative designed to align efforts to create and promote green jobs across the state.

Schwarzenegger will be hoping that the scheme helps tackle youth unemployment while also helping to cut carbon emissions and providing a stimulus for the ailing California economy. In January, he decried the logjam over the state budget – finally resolved last month – that he said had frozen a number of environmental infrastructure projects throughout the state.

The governor is not the only high-profile politician trying to create a grassroots green movement among young people. Former vice president Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection launched the We Campaign almost exactly a year ago to try to recruit 10 million people to promote social change to combat global warming.