Today, Bernie Sanders unveiled his plan for a Green New Deal. Its most important function will be to pull the planet back from the brink of annihilation by slashing carbon emissions and transitioning to renewable energy.

But it has another implication, one of special importance to socialists. Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s house bill, Bernie’s plan introduces a federal jobs program to put people to work building new green infrastructure. It calls for the creation of 20 million “good paying, union jobs with strong benefits and safety standards in steel and auto manufacturing, construction, energy efficiency retrofitting, coding and server farms, and renewable power plants.” All of this work will go toward making the necessary transition to a sustainable society no longer dependent on fossil fuels.

While the official estimates are always too low, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts about 6 million people as unemployed and actively looking for work. Sanders’s Green New Deal plan would, in a sense, amount to a de facto job guarantee, functionally guaranteeing employment to anyone who is searching for it.