Short Wave - Biden Proposes A 'Civilian Corps' To Address Climate Change

Episode Date: May 20, 2021

During the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps to improve the country's public lands, forests, and parks. Now, nearly a hundred years later, President Biden is trying to bring a similar version of it back. He wants to launch the Civilian Climate Corps to address the threat of climate change. NPR's White House correspondent Scott Detrow and National Desk Correspondent Nathan Rott report on Biden's plan and how it could play out.Click here to see photos and read more on this story.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, everybody. Emily Kwong here. During the Great Depression, with millions of Americans out of work, then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created one of the most celebrated public plans in U.S. history. In magnificent natural beauty of the American National Parks have gone many companies of the Civilian Conservation Corps to further projects which will guard this wealth of beauty against destruction by men and nature. The Civilian Conservation Corps.

The Biden administration is trying to bring a version of it back, but in this case, to help in the fight against climate change. On today's episode, a story from NPR's White House correspondent Scott Detrow in Washington and National Desk correspondent Nathan Roth in Montana. They explain how a civilian climate corps might work. Nearly 100 years since a creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, much of its legacy is still being put to use. Of everything they did here, this tunnel is the most impressive piece of work.

Tom Forwood is the assistant manager of Lewis and Clark Cavern State Park in West Central Montana. 538 feet long. Blasted from the outside in. The tunnel is big. You could walk down it comfortably until the thing. passage opens into a massive dark cave where the air is heavy with a chilly humidity. This cave forward says was discovered by a member of the Conservation Corps, who decided to do a little non-sanctioned exploring. Like I said, slith through all that and came out into just this.

He hits the lights. Whoa. So it's by far the largest room we know of in the cave system. It has the biggest formations in the whole cave that we know of as well. ribbed columns of rocks stretch from ceiling to floor, looking like glistening coral reefs. Perfect. Some of these formations are still a million years old if they're growing at life. And every year, 70 to 80,000 people get to enjoy them. That's not to mention the millions more who use trails, the campgrounds, the bridges, the dams, and other work that was done by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

That's one of the things they hear the most from our visitors when they talk about the history at all, is they lament the loss of that type of an organization of the CCC. Here in Washington, it makes sense President Biden is so drawn to the idea of rebooting one of the most popular, enduring programs from the New Deal. Biden has draped himself in FDR symbolism, and like Roosevelt, he's made big government spending in programs a key part of his agenda. A once-in-a-generation investment in America itself. This is the largest jobs plan since World War II. In fact, Biden has positioned himself as the first president in general. generations to, like FDR, unapologetically pitched the federal government and government spending as the solution to big problems.

These are investments we made together as one country, and investments that only the government was in a position to make. Time and again, they propel us into the future. Jonathan Alter wrote a book about Roosevelt's first hundred days. Well, we've been living in the shadow of Reagan's America. now it's back to the future. We're going to start to live in the shadow of FDR. Alter says it fits that as Biden tries to connect government to people's lives again, he'd want to signal to a project as broad and lasting as the CCC. They planted three billion trees. This, you know, saved the topsoil of the United States.

It created all kinds of state parks. But how would this actually work? To begin there would be a couple major differences from the original CCC, the first scope. Biden wants to spend $10 billion on his new CCC, a sliver of the infrastructure plan, not to mention the original program adjusted for inflation. That means far fewer jobs would be created. But they'd be offered to a broader group of people. For all the nostalgia, the CCC brings up among progressives, there's the reality it was racially segregated, closed off to women, and paid almost nothing. Colin O'Mara, the head of the National Wildlife Federation, has been pushing for a reboot for a long time. But says there's no question that dynamic would need to be different.

This is simply a gap year for college kids from the suburbs, like we will have absolutely failed on every level. And so I think that means more inclusive hiring. I mean, I think it means doing work in both urban and rural environments. It means specifically doing outreach to black, Latino, Latino, indigenous, Asian-American organizations to help build strong partnerships to do work on the ground. Biden wants to focus this CCC on climate change. It would be the climate core, not the conservation core. It's not necessarily about the program's cutting carbon emissions, says Ali Zadhi, one of Biden's top climate advisors.

Instead, Zaddi says the project would be much more about mitigation, better preparing for the extreme weather already here. We need to recognize that one of the risks that our infrastructure faces today comes from the unleashed impacts of a changing climate, whether it's wildfire or flood or heat waves. There are several versions of the plan in Congress right now, plus an executive order. Colorado Congressman Joe Neguse, a Democrat, is playing a key role in shaping the bills. He sees the program as similar to AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps. Trail construction and maintenance, fence construction and removal, fire fuels, mitigation in our forests,

and wildland fire suppression, invasive species, treatment, and eradication. To get a sense of what that work would look like, spend a day with the Montana Conservation Corps, one of more than a hundred smaller cores modeled after the original. The crew of mostly early 20-somethings are rehabbing a popular hiking and biking trail here in northwest Montana, removing down trees and encroaching plants. Jeez, Louise. Twenty-year-old Emily Brown is from North Carolina. Yeah, yeah, I'm kind of doing that.

Yeah. Crews like this do work throughout Montana and other states every year, helping improve trails, fixing aging infrastructure, clearing vegetation to slow fires. And it is hard, hard work. The crew comes from all over the country. I'm from Maine. Dayton, Ohio.

New York, Chicago, Pennsylvania. Do you have friends back home that are like, what are you doing? Absolutely. What do you tell them? Having more fun than you. Most joined the Montana Conservation Corps because they have an interest in the outdoors or in dealing with climate change. That includes 23-year-old Jack O'Hanlon from New York. You want a future, right?

You know, like if you're going to have kids, like you want them to like enjoy outside, you know, being in nature. For Kaylee Kimball from Maine, the inspiration came from her own past. My grandfather joined the CCC when everyone lost their job. actually to provide for his family. He helped construct the Appalachian Trail. So it's a cool feeling to be doing the same type of work. Part of the goal of this Corps and the original CCC was not just to provide jobs,

but create a place for young people to develop. Joe Spofforth is 21 and from Columbus, Ohio. There's big pushes in education these days to go right from high school to college and then to graduate in exactly four years. And that was my plan until COVID hit and I decided to come out here. And I sort of realized after taking a step back

that I had no idea what I was doing. So coming out here and working has given me a great opportunity to sort of find out more about myself and my interests and what I want to do. And he says he hopes more people will soon have a similar opportunity. I'm Nathan Roth, NPR News in Montana. And I'm Scott Detrow in Washington. Shortwave is produced by Giselle Grayson, Viet Leigh, Britt Hansen, Rebecca Ramirez.

Thomas Liu, Rasha Aridi, Maddie Safaya, and me, Emily Kwog. We're back tomorrow with more shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR. I'm Yeway Shaw. I'm Kea Miyakin-Aetis. We're the hosts of the NPR podcast, Invisibilia. You can think of Invisibilia kind of like a sonic blacklight. When you switch us on, you will hear surprising and intimate stories. Stories that help you notice things in your world that maybe you didn't see before.

Listen to the Invisibilia podcast from NPR.