When it comes to shifting away from a carbon-based economy, the two big questions are “how” and “how fast.” Answering either will require a parallel shift in employment priorities. Fortunately, there’s a smart way to fill the millions of green jobs the initiative will require—and a 90-year-old model for how to do it.

That precedent is the Civilian Conservation Corps, the New Deal program that helped 3 million young people who were out of work during the Great Depression. In nine years starting in 1933, CCC workers planted 3 billion trees, built or improved 800 national and state parks, constructed bridges and roads, mitigated erosion, suppressed wildfires, and controlled flooding. Corps members also got paid, and part of that money went to their families back home to bolster local economies. Our national memory recalls it as a win for everyone involved, and today the CCC is known as the most popular New Deal program.

But mythologizing comes easy, and the reality was more complicated. For starters, the Civilian Conservation Corps excluded women. It was also segregated with separate units for Black and Native American members, both mostly overseen by white workers and offering little opportunity for advancement. The wage was livable, but only in the context of the provided room and board. And the work was primarily physical labor, with professional training in things like forestry, surveying, or cooking as an incidental benefit. The mass mobilization of Corpsmen into the armed forces of WWII ended the experiment, leaving us no clear picture of how the program would have fared in better economic times.

Yet for all its problems, the CCC is a viable blueprint. The Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan called it out specifically (though not budgetarily), rechristening the program the Civilian Climate Corps. Although that legislation seems dead, the idea of a new CCC lives on. Here’s how we should go about it.

  1. Start with inclusion.
  2. Build a generation of climate leaders.
  3. Make climate-conscious changes close to home.
  4. Do it now.

Read the full article about the civilian conservation corps by David Gibson at The Aspen Institute.