0:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello friend, I know you could be anywhere else right now, so I'm glad you're here. 0:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's get started. 0:22 [SPEAKER_00]: The unsung heroes of America's park systems are the men of the CCC, the civilian conservation core, established by Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the height of the Great Depression. 0:35 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1932, American unemployment hit a record high of nearly 25%. 0:40 [SPEAKER_00]: That same year, FDR made the CCC a major part of his political platform. 0:47 [SPEAKER_00]: In a 1933, the first year of his presidency, the first civilian conservation core camps are founded. 0:55 [SPEAKER_00]: The program was enormously popular with the American public. 0:58 [SPEAKER_00]: In Roosevelt was known to visit these camps whenever possible. 1:09 [SPEAKER_04]: Virginia, inspiring as far as Tommy by a personal visit, 1:12 [SPEAKER_04]: President Roosevelt makes his first tour that's a billion conservation core account on the Shenandoah Valley. 1:18 [SPEAKER_02]: Woo! 1:26 [UNKNOWN]: Woo! 1:27 [SPEAKER_04]: After inspecting Skyland, the commander-in-chief takes a seat at the head of the table to eat with the boys, and he enjoys every bite of the plain wholesome food furnished at the camp. 1:39 [SPEAKER_03]: It's very good to be here at these Virginia CCC camps, I wish I could see them all over the country. 1:45 [SPEAKER_03]: I hope that all over the country there in this fine condition as the camps that I've seen today. 1:51 [SPEAKER_03]: I wish that I could take a couple of months off from the White House and come down here and live with them because I know I'd get full of health the way they have. 1:59 [SPEAKER_03]: The only difference is that they've put on an average of about 12 pounds of peace and steak out here and I'm trying to take off 12 pounds. 2:11 [SPEAKER_00]: This next clip is from a 1939 press release from the United States Department of the Interior. 2:24 [SPEAKER_01]: Employment for hundreds of thousands of young men and war veterans was imperative. 2:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Have a grot by soil erosion at long since shown the necessity of the immediate restoration conservation and further development of the country's natural resources. 2:39 [SPEAKER_01]: As one solution for both problems, the organization and work of the civilian conservation for all is undertaken. 2:46 [SPEAKER_01]: And in two years, through this unique plan, both problems were well on their way toward solution as great age to economic recovery. 2:54 [SPEAKER_01]: The saving of natural resources was conservation pure and simple. 2:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Along with national infrastructure and the national parks, the national state park system benefited enormously. 3:08 [SPEAKER_01]: One important phase of the development of these resources was more than that. 3:12 [SPEAKER_01]: It was the making of a nationwide system of recreational areas, smaller, more numerous state parks, closer to the people, more easily accessible for their use, supplementing 3:25 [SPEAKER_01]: conservation work in all its many phases is being done in these state park areas from one end of the country to the other. 3:32 [SPEAKER_01]: Better facilities for forest firefighting are being provided through the building of truck trails, fire lanes and observation dollars, and the stringing of communication lines. 3:42 [SPEAKER_01]: Speed is imperative in fighting forest fires, quick discovery, the quick spreading of the alarm and roads to reach the scene of action. 3:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Dead trees and tangled dry undergrowth are being cleared from the forest where necessary to prevent the starting of fires. 3:57 [SPEAKER_01]: An aggressive war is being waged on the insects, which slowly but surely are destroying natural beauty in our wide open spaces. 4:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Tent caterpillars are a menace to our forest lands. 4:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And beautiful metals and fields are constantly being stripped of their vegetation, unless the hungry grasshoppers are fed poison branch. 4:15 [SPEAKER_01]: The value of modern tree surgery and saving our forests in special situations is being liberally attested. 4:22 [SPEAKER_01]: Planting is another important conservation measure. 4:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Seedlings, literally in the millions are being set out to replace trees ruthlessly destroyed. 4:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Shrubbery is being planted on slopes and hillsides to stop soil erosion. 4:34 [SPEAKER_01]: More spectacular is the moving of mature trees for landscaping purposes. 4:39 [SPEAKER_01]: There's a world of power in this mighty movement, men and machinery, 4:43 [SPEAKER_01]: old dabbing and even his more picturesque brethren. 4:48 [SPEAKER_00]: The day our national and state parks are in trouble, overcrowding and underfunding have taken a heavy toll in recent years, and stories of park abuse and deterioration are increasingly common. 5:00 [SPEAKER_00]: This will be a perfect time for the return of the CCC. 5:05 [SPEAKER_00]: as one article has said, quote, America's National Parks face a popularity crisis. 5:12 [SPEAKER_00]: From 2010 to 2019, the number of national park visitors spiked from 281 million to 327 million. 5:22 [SPEAKER_00]: largely driven by social media, advertising and increasing foreign tourism. 5:28 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the phrases you're here repeatedly from conservationists is this idea that we are in danger of quote, loving our parks to death and there's really not a better way to say it. 5:39 [SPEAKER_00]: This kind of surge in visitors has happened before. 5:43 [SPEAKER_00]: In the 1920s, when automobile tourism boomed across the country, photrafic and cartrafic began to destroy and diminish these natural areas, and what saved our parks and landscapes at that time? 5:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing other than the CCC. 6:00 [SPEAKER_00]: It arrived just in time. 6:02 [SPEAKER_00]: In the words of one journalist, in the 1920s, quote, hundreds of thousands of new visitors, overwhelmed limited, aging roads, trails, restrooms, water treatment systems, and visitor facilities. 6:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Ironically, relief came during the Great Depression. 6:21 [SPEAKER_00]: The New Deal funded massive construction projects in the parts, including campground comfort stations, museums, and other structures. 6:30 [SPEAKER_00]: hundreds of miles of roads and trails, open to wildback country. 6:35 [SPEAKER_00]: When I last spoke with Will and Gem, from more than just parks, the subject of the CCC came up, as we discussed the charming old lodges that you find in many of the oldest national parks. 6:52 [SPEAKER_05]: One of the great things that Jim and I especially love in the National Parks are lodges. 6:57 [SPEAKER_05]: The beautiful National Park lodges that have been built. 7:00 [SPEAKER_05]: It places like glacier, places like Yosemite, Yellowstone, Mount Reneer, you name it. 7:06 [SPEAKER_05]: This doesn't happen anymore. 7:07 [SPEAKER_05]: You'd there are no more lodges being built in National Parks. 7:11 [SPEAKER_05]: period. 7:13 [SPEAKER_05]: And it is something where Jim and I are deep conservationists, but I think both of us would like to see that kind of work be done responsibly, where when it was done back in the day, a lot of it was done by civilian conservation core architects, a program, maybe the greatest conservation program ever in the history of the world, the CCC program that Jim and I would love 7:39 [SPEAKER_05]: It would be fantastic to do some sort of a voluntary. 7:42 [SPEAKER_05]: They have AmeriCorps and that's a really great thing. 7:45 [SPEAKER_05]: But I think a civilian conservation core where young people, particularly, could go in and get money for college afterwards or different incentives and, of course, the federal government could offer all sorts of incentives for piration and things like that. 8:04 [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and I think the idea of it at the time, it was a depression era program that was started to put kids to work, but also to build up the nation's infrastructure. 8:12 [SPEAKER_05]: And so they would go out, they'd go, if you're from Georgia, you might end up in Utah, if you're in Utah, you might end up in New York. 8:18 [SPEAKER_05]: So all these kids are exposed to all these different ways of life. 8:21 [SPEAKER_05]: It was great for them. 8:22 [SPEAKER_05]: Jim and I had a next-door neighbor who was in the civilian conservation department. 8:26 [SPEAKER_05]: And he would tell us stories all the time, but I think one of his fingers got cut off in the Civilian Conservation Corps, and he still said it was the best time of his life. 8:35 [SPEAKER_05]: And the memories that they made there were priceless, but also, I think there's a statistic out there and you'll have to fact check me on this, but I think for every one dollar that was spent on the Civilian Conservation Corps, the nation got $10 back in value. 8:49 [SPEAKER_05]: And so it was also one of the best investments the country ever made cutting fire roads, building different roads, building all these beautiful public works projects that many of which are still around today and most of which that's. 9:04 [SPEAKER_05]: And so I think if we were, I think now that you do have a youth climate core, there have been sent, but I think Bill Clinton did some sort of half program on the civilian conservation core, like trying to redo it, but the scale of it, I think, is all wrong. 9:20 [SPEAKER_05]: I think it should be basically an alternative to armed service serving in the armed services. 9:26 [SPEAKER_05]: I think he should have colleges and options once he graduate, going into the workforce, 9:34 [SPEAKER_05]: why not a GI bill for the CCC do something like that where people instead of going into the armed services which is great but just also have the choice of maybe going into the CCC and it's a great way to take pride in your country and get exposed to different areas and be able to say I helped better my country it's a great public service. 9:58 [SPEAKER_05]: And as we battle wildfires, it's close to wildfires in the west. 10:02 [SPEAKER_05]: Right. 10:03 [SPEAKER_05]: It's a fantastic idea. 10:04 [SPEAKER_05]: Get these people in there doing the firework that needs to be done the preventative work at a cut rate. 10:10 [SPEAKER_05]: And pay them done at sand don't pay them. 10:12 [SPEAKER_05]: Compared to what it would cost. 10:14 [SPEAKER_05]: Otherwise, it's a great deal. 10:17 [SPEAKER_00]: I asked if there was anyone in Washington. 10:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Currently pushing this agenda. 10:22 [SPEAKER_05]: I know that I remember in the last election, Pete Buttigieg was something that he was interested in was doing public service, CCC type of public service. 10:34 [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know if he wanted to make it compulsory or I don't, I'm not sure, I don't think saying. 10:39 [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, but I remember that was something that he had put on his paint-platform. 10:44 [SPEAKER_05]: But I haven't heard 10:46 [SPEAKER_05]: frankly, a whole lot of it. 10:47 [SPEAKER_05]: And I think we'll touch on it, you know, a lot of times there, it's been done kind of that. 10:52 [SPEAKER_05]: I wouldn't even say harshly. 10:54 [SPEAKER_05]: But yeah, there's been, they'll put a little bit of money into something. 10:57 [SPEAKER_05]: And it's better than nothing, but it's never the scale is old. 11:02 [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. 11:02 [SPEAKER_05]: And I think especially for millennials now, I think it is a program that would really speak to millennials. 11:10 [SPEAKER_05]: I think millennials are far more conservation-minded, far more climate-oriented. 11:15 [SPEAKER_05]: If that was an option after college, especially like now about a time. 11:20 [SPEAKER_05]: But when higher education costs so much and you could actually have maybe the federal government pays for your higher education if you go and do and it could be you do two years of the CCC, they'll pay for two years of college or whatever it is. 11:37 [SPEAKER_05]: I think that it could be a great solution to a lot of the higher education issues that are in student loan debt. 11:45 [SPEAKER_00]: This suggestion of including free education in the CCC experience dates back to the original program, where schooling of a different kind was provided to all members. 11:57 [SPEAKER_01]: In the functioning of the civilian conservation core plan, however, there is another and even more interesting form of rehabilitation. 12:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Among hundreds of thousands of young men and war veterans enrolled, there have been many unable to read or write. 12:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Others whose schooling has been interrupted were found to be slipping in the matter of education and morale. 12:15 [SPEAKER_01]: The important job of mentally rehabilitating is extremely valuable cross-section of the manpower of the country has been entrusted to the Office of Education Department of the Interior. 12:25 [SPEAKER_01]: Competent instructors and conservation core camps conduct classes in many of the educational branches. 12:31 [SPEAKER_01]: The boys are given the opportunity to go to school just as they might have done years ago. 12:35 [SPEAKER_01]: In addition, there are many practical manual training courses intended to prepare the enrollees for happier and more de-munitive work when their association with the core has ended. 12:45 [SPEAKER_00]: As great as all of these educational outcomes would be, for all of the men and women involved, what the country would get out of a program like this would be a coast to coast renovation of our national parks. 12:57 [SPEAKER_00]: As Will and Jim mentioned, many of these parks are still relying on amenities and infrastructure that date back to the time of the press release you just heard from 1939, which is to say, it's been way, way too long. 13:12 [SPEAKER_05]: And it's just, it's almost a segue point, but that point I need earlier about every dollar that was put into the CCC, the United States got many fold the dollars back. 13:23 [SPEAKER_05]: It's the same with public lands in America. 13:26 [SPEAKER_05]: And that's something that often goes overlooked. 13:28 [SPEAKER_05]: People look at these bills on public lands, which we finally got one recently that was very substantial, but it was the first time in a long time and our park said to become extremely neglected to get to a 13:42 [SPEAKER_05]: some places. 13:43 [SPEAKER_05]: But for every dollar that goes towards national parks, the amount of money that the country gets back is many fold. 13:50 [SPEAKER_05]: And the National Parks Conservation Association does some great literature that graphically explains this better than we can. 13:59 [SPEAKER_05]: But it's incredible because it really is an investment that pays itself back. 14:03 [SPEAKER_05]: And especially just in tourism dollars, look 14:11 [SPEAKER_05]: the explosion that happens in tourism. 14:14 [SPEAKER_05]: And these are sustainable green dollars. 14:16 [SPEAKER_05]: They're not like, people look at like Alaska, for example. 14:20 [SPEAKER_05]: And they say, okay, what is Alaska's greatest resource? 14:23 [SPEAKER_05]: What's the economy like in Alaska? 14:25 [SPEAKER_05]: And it's tourism, it's not oil, it's not extraction. 14:29 [SPEAKER_05]: It is tourism, which is completely renewable. 14:32 [SPEAKER_05]: And if you keep these places pristine, they will always be yielding dollars across the economy. 14:40 [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's fat. 14:41 [SPEAKER_05]: It is amazing because land preservation, you do have some people who will say, oh, well, we could be putting that land to use. 14:48 [SPEAKER_05]: We could be extracting whether it's timber, whether it's minerals, whether it's oil, what have you. 14:54 [SPEAKER_05]: And those are all things that in 14:56 [SPEAKER_05]: in today's world, they do need to go on. 14:59 [SPEAKER_05]: We do need to have resources, but it's, I think there's a line that John Murr said, John Murr used to say nothing tolerable is safe. 15:09 [SPEAKER_05]: And that, I think he put it really well in that sense, but I think what gets lost on a lot of people is that when you preserve land, that's also tolerable. 15:20 [SPEAKER_05]: We can preserve land and actually the tourism industry, people wanting to visit there and do recreational activities, it's completely renewable and it returns a lot of money and it doesn't damage the land and it still leaves the land in intact space so that, hey, if there were some emergency, that oil that's under there, it still be there or whatever. 15:44 [SPEAKER_05]: So, yeah, I think a lot of people forget about that the figures are out there easily. 15:49 [SPEAKER_05]: You can look them up and the outdoor tours in the industry. 15:52 [SPEAKER_05]: It's a bearable cash cow. 15:54 [SPEAKER_05]: But a lot of industries, other industries that compete with that, but don't necessarily want you to know about that. 16:02 [SPEAKER_00]: In our first episode with Will and Jim, they described American leaders, like Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Jimmy Carter, who were willing to risk their political careers on their investments into conservationism and the national parks. 16:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Protecting American landscapes was more than a political platform for these presidents. 16:25 [SPEAKER_00]: it was a lifelong passion. 16:27 [SPEAKER_00]: You get the sense from all of them, that if they had to choose between reelection and doing the right thing for the environment, they would have simply gone and found another job. 16:36 [SPEAKER_00]: I shared that thought with Will and Jim. 16:40 [SPEAKER_05]: It's so true and yeah, I do, I think Will and I often find ourselves longing for a leader like a 16:50 [SPEAKER_05]: didn't care what the the pundits were going to think they stood up for what they thought was right and they Yeah, theater Roosevelt. 16:59 [SPEAKER_05]: He visit there's a story visits. 17:01 [SPEAKER_05]: Yo Samity when he's the president and he shakes the secret service and goes off two nights alone just him and John Muir 17:09 [SPEAKER_05]: And they're out, and they're sleeping under the stars, and they're in the Maraposa Grove of Sequoia. 17:16 [SPEAKER_05]: And Muro is bending his ear about conservation, and it was just the two of them, and he comes back on his horse. 17:23 [SPEAKER_05]: And they're like, where have you been? 17:25 [SPEAKER_05]: What? 17:26 [SPEAKER_05]: And that kind of stuff. 17:28 [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, you don't see people with that kind of passion anymore for things like that. 17:32 [SPEAKER_05]: And I think it's a shame because we could really use some of that. 17:37 [SPEAKER_00]: What Jim is describing is an almost religious passion about conservation. 17:42 [SPEAKER_00]: For someone to risk their career on a massive environmental rollout like the CCC, they would need to be willing to do that for its own sake. 17:51 [SPEAKER_00]: They would need to be willing to die on that hill, politically speaking, in order to push it through. 17:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Carter certainly did dial on that. 18:01 [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and it's interesting because not since Jimmy Carter, we've done some work on this and so I'm quoting a friend of Jim and ours, but not since Carter was there a president who made conservation his number one priority. 18:15 [SPEAKER_05]: And that is an interesting thought because you're looking at 40-year gap between somebody who said, this is the top. 18:24 [SPEAKER_05]: This is it. 18:24 [SPEAKER_05]: And if you ask him, his old tell you, his greatest achievements were in conservation, were in Alaska. 18:30 [SPEAKER_05]: And that is, that's something to think about, especially as we move into a climate era, we do need people. 18:37 [SPEAKER_05]: But there aren't many people who run on those 18:42 [SPEAKER_05]: for whatever reason, it still isn't the thing that gets, and it's not, and it isn't just about running on those things. 18:49 [SPEAKER_05]: It's like we've been saying, it's about the conviction. 18:52 [SPEAKER_05]: There are people with that kind of conviction, that kind of deep, 18:57 [SPEAKER_05]: seeded sort of religious connection to the outdoors or to conservation to protecting places like that. 19:05 [SPEAKER_05]: It's been more of, oh, that's a plank in my party, so I'll do that. 19:09 [SPEAKER_05]: More on that side than it has been on the Carter or the Roosevelt side where it's a fundamental part of who they are. 19:18 [SPEAKER_05]: And they don't care whether it's part of their party's platform or whether it's going to be politically beneficial to them. 19:25 [SPEAKER_05]: they're going to do the right thing in that area and conservation regardless of the cost. 19:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Our national and state parks are in a condition of increasing disrepair. 19:40 [SPEAKER_00]: They're still beautiful, of course. 19:42 [SPEAKER_00]: But overcrowding and underfunding are taking their toll. 19:46 [SPEAKER_00]: The best place to start, the coast to coast renovation that our landscape really deserves, might just be the revival of this civilian conservation core. 19:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Jim and Will have made a great case for it. 19:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I want to thank them again for joining us. 20:00 [SPEAKER_00]: You can visit their website more than just parks 20:05 [SPEAKER_00]: They have articles and videos and some of the best national park coverage you'll ever find
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