"A 1930s initiative that tackled environmental woes and unemployment could inspire the new administration’s plans to confront the climate crisis"
"Nearly a century ago, the US faced unemployment at 25% and environmental woes such as flooding along major rivers and extensive deforestation. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt decided to tackle these emergencies simultaneously by creating the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as part of his New Deal.
Through its nine-year existence, Roosevelt’s “Tree Army” put an impressive 3 million jobless Americans to work. All in all, CCC enrollees planted more than 3bn trees, paved 125,000 miles of roadways, erected 3,000 fire lookouts, and spent 6m workdays fighting forest fires. The artifacts from this ambitious effort – such as trails and structures dotting the Grand Canyon national park or the Pacific Coast Trail – are beloved today.
“In creating the Civilian Conservation Corps, we are killing two birds with one stone,” Roosevelt explained in one of his early fireside chats. “We are conserving not only our natural resources but also our human resources.”"
Paola Rosa-Aquino reports for the Guardian February 9, 2021.
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