What a fabulous hike I enjoyed today during my vacation in the San Juan Islands! It turns out that my day was made possible by Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Civilian Conservation Corps — the original “green jobs” program, and maybe the best.
The view from atop Mt. Constitution
My wife and I climbed to the top of 2,409-foot Mt. Constitution, the highest peak in the San Juans, in Moran State Park on Orcas Island. The views are spectacular, particularly from the top of a stone observation tower built on the summit in 1936 by the CCC. According to this brief online history,
Between 1933 and 1941, the CCC men build miles of trails, many buildings, and numerous other improvements in Moran State Park, which was donated to the state in 1921 by former Seattle mayor and shipbuilder Robert Moran (1857-1943).
The 5,252-acre park features five freshwater lakes and more than 30 miles of hiking trails, all built by the CCC.
Could we recreate the Civilian Conservation Corps today? I’ve been a skeptic about “green jobs” in general, and in particular about the claim that a cap-and-trade program to regulate greenhouse gases is an effective way to generate new jobs. I’m also not persuaded that the Department of Energy’s vast subsidies for clean energy are a smart way to create jobs, though they may be worthwhile for othe reasons.
But in the midst of this Great Recession, with unemployment still on the rise, the federal government could be putting a lot more people to work improving our national, state and local parks. (According to the non-profit journalism group Pro Publica, the stimulus package includes a little more than $700 million for the National Parks Service and another $300 million or so for the Bureau of Land Management. But these monies obviously don’t establish a dedicated work force of a young men and women, as FDR did.) Creating a new Civilian Conservation Corps would provide a boost to the jobless and the poor (many of those in the original military-style corps were homeless or malnourished), the new jobs would stimulate the economy and while, yes, all the money we spend now will have to be repaid with long-term borrowing, a contemporary corps would deliver lasting benefits to millions of Americans.
After all, as I saw today, parks built 70 years ago by the CCC continue to delight visitors. I have no doubt that they will continue to do so for many years to come.
Mt. Constitution observation tower
I agree with you on Cap and Trade not being the best way to creat green jobs. The opportunity to create jobs while saving energy arises because the energy market is inefficient. Hence, applying a market signal such as a carbon price is not likely to be very effective… market signals work best in functioning markets.
What is much likelier to create green jobs is improving the efficiency of the energy market, by imporving market signals (real time information about energy use, for instance, and pay as you drive auto insurance), as well as regulation to enforce the adoption of efficienct technology where it is cost effective but market forces are not yet doing the job, such as building codes which require more efficeinct buildings.
I make this case in more detail in a recent article:
http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives/2009/07/green_jobs_debunking_the_debunkers.html
Have a great vacation!
Hi Marc-
Sounds like you are having a fabulous time.
Thanks for writing this great post.
I am very familiar with the CCC and the GREAT WORK that they did that we now get to enjoy over 75 years later.
Several State Parks in Arkansas were built by the CCC. One in particular
Devils Den State Park was only a 20 minute drive from my home. I spent many days there and put a lot of miles on my hiking boots in that fabulous park. I also stayed several times at the wonderful cabins built by the CCC in the 30’s.
Have fun,
Coral
[...] jobs skeptic Marc Gunther thinks a program modeled after Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps — which helped [...]
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