REVIVE THE CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS
BRING BACK THE CCC
My philosophy in life is that everything is a combination. There is no result contrived of just one action. It is a combination of elements that cause an outcome. Same could be said about how we combat climate change. I came across this article by Craig Oxford on Medium that gets into the idea of reviving the Civilian Conservation Corps. (An early 1930s voluntary public work relief program, focusing young civilians on the manual task of conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands. A legacy by the late president Franklin D. Roosevelt.) Check out what he said!
Company 818 on the N. Rim.
“There’s a lot of talk these days about reversing climate change and preventing significant further biodiversity loss. From wind turbines and solar panels to carbon taxes and electric cars, it seems everyone has a policy proposal intended to deal with the environment.
There’s no single solution that will halt climate change or reverse habitat loss. If we successfully dodge these bullets as a species it will be because we successfully implemented many ideas rather than one single big idea. However, there is one policy proposal that could bring together experts and average citizens alike to work on whatever we decide to do: resurrect the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).
The CCC was launched in 1933 as a jobs program during the Great Depression. Small armies of workers were dispatched to national parks and forests across the United States to build trails, plant trees, and control erosion. Many of the projects these laborers worked on are still in use to this day.
Nationwide the accomplishments of the Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees can be measured in several ways: more than three billion trees planted, 28,000 miles of trails constructed, and 63,000 buildings constructed. ~ National Park Service, Grand Canyon CCC
There’s still much old-fashioned pick and shovel work to do across America’s wilder landscapes, to say nothing of the rest of the world. But there are significant differences between our current challenges and those facing us in 1933.
Flint, Michigan recently reminded us that there are millions of people living in communities with aging pipes that are leaching lead into our drinking water. Many urban communities also lack sufficient parks for people to safely experience the physical and psychological benefits that come from spending time outdoors . Community gardens, environmental education programs, urban forestry programs and the construction of walking/biking paths could also come under the umbrella of a modern CCC.
Whether in remote areas, in rural communities, or urban centers there is one thing a modern CCC program could accomplish that is too often overlooked in contemporary environmental management: restoring a sense of connectedness with each other and the wider world. When we think of nature, whether as environmentalists, economists or policymakers, we too often envision it as something apart from us instead of as something integral to our mental, physical, and social health as creatures on this planet.
The original CCC placed workers in the environments they were attempting to protect and restore. Though the goal of the program was not to develop any sort of bond with the land, or with fellow coworkers, both environmental and social connections inevitably fed off each other and grew stronger under the circumstances. According to a 2006 article published in Prologue Magazine, the quarterly publication of the US National Archives, tens of thousands of the roughly 2.5 million men who participated in the CCC program were still gathering for regular reunions often held near their camps as of its writing. The article concludes:
They often joke about how they and the trees they planted have grown old together. The trees will undoubtedly outlive their planters, but Americans will do well to long remember the young men who provided one of the few positive and colorful chapters in the drab decade of Depression and bequeathed them a more beautiful and healthier environment.
In polarized times in which environmental anxiety is running high, a program that brings citizens from diverse backgrounds together to do something that can make a tangible difference is just what we need. Since we have so little to lose by making the effort and so much potentially to gain, certainly a CCC for the twenty-first century is worth a try.”
