Bring Back the Civilian Conservation Corps
We desperately need the environmental and cultural renewal it could bring
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…
