Lessons for a Green New Deal today

With all the current interest in the Green New Deal, it is important to remember that the first New Deal of the 1930s was very much a “green” program. Franklin D. Roosevelt was an ardent conservationist who was proud to assume the mantle of his uncle, Teddy Roosevelt, and other turn-of-the-century Progressives who sought to protect and manage the nation’s natural resources. Progressive reformers sought to heal a continent after the onslaught of 19th century expansion and industrialization, and the New Deal faced a similar challenge in the mid-20th century.

A look back at the programs of the Roosevelt Administration, 1933-1942, can help American visualize the range of environmental challenges the country faced in the past and aggressive government response under the New Deal. This may inspire Americans today not to despair over global threats to oceans, forests, and wildlife, and to come together under a broad green tent to promote sensible policies to protect our nation’s future.

Forest planting and protection. The leading program for forest conservation was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), created by Executive Order in 1933. The CCC worked with the US Forest Service and the states to plant some 3 billion trees in national forests and on spent farmland abandoned during the Depression. CCC men also built firebreaks, fire roads and fire lookouts across the country and fought major pest outbreaks. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) planted millions of street trees in cities. 

Soil conservation. Farm and grazing land across the country had been abused for decades, leading to the disaster of the Dust Bowl, billions of tons of topsoil washing away in floods, and widespread soil exhaustion. The Soil Erosion Service was launched in 1933 and made permanent as the Soil Conservation Service in 1935 to work with farmers to improve their practices and restore damaged land. The CCC and WPA contributed to erosion control with check dams, wind breaks and fencing, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933/1938) reversed the expansion of marginal farmland. The Taylor Grazing Act (1933) and US Grazing Service (1939) brought the first oversight of federal grazing lands.

Flood control and water management. In response to massive floods on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers in the late 1920s, the New Deal ramped up federal support for dams and levees under the Army Corps of Engineers. Bureau of Reclamation irrigation and flood control projects in the West were also greatly expanded. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), created in 1933, was a revolutionary attempt at multiple-use management of a major river basin, which transformed the upper South. Although water projects were immensely popular in the 1930s, after World War II there was a revolt against overbuilding because of the loss of free-flowing rivers, destruction of fish runs, excessive irrigation of marginal lands and over-reliance on flood control works.

Clean water. The nation’s rivers and lakes had been fouled by a century of mostly unregulated discharges by factories and cities. The New Deal addressed the problem of polluted water in two ways. On the one hand, the Public Works Administration (PWA) funded hundreds of new water supply and treatment systems to bring the people clean drinking water. On the other, the PWA paid for new sewers and major upgrades in sewage treatment, as in Washington, DC. and New York City. Better soil management also reduced sediment runoff into rivers around the country.

Public health. The New Deal enlarged the US Public Heath Service’s efforts on several fronts and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was revitalized.  The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) was tasked with the first Food Stamps program (1939) and the USDA launched a major public education campaign to improve family nutrition, which was promulgated with the help of the WPA’s poster division. WPA and National Youth Administration (NYA) workers made over a million lunches for school kids.

Parks and recreation. The New Dealers fervently believed in the value of public recreation for the health and happiness of the American people. In the cities, tens of thousands of playgrounds and parks were built or improved, along with pools, ball fields, tennis courts, golf courses, and more. Several national parks and monuments were created or expanded, including Shenandoah NP, Olympic NP and Canyonlands NM. All across the country, the CCC and WPA built facilities like campgrounds, hiking trails and picnic areas to make national, state and local parks usable for decades to come.

Wildlife protection. The slaughter of wildlife as the continent was conquered is legendary. Efforts to address the problem began in the late 19th century and Teddy Roosevelt created the first National Wildlife Refuge at the turn of the century. The New Deal added well over a hundred new refuges, thanks to presidential actions and major improvements in funding. The Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act of 1934 brought the revenues to buy back abused and marginal farm and ranch land for refuges (especially in the Dust Bowl); others were carved out of national forest and grazing lands. Federal refuge management was dramatically upgraded under the Bureau of Biological Survey (1934), later folded into the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the Department of Interior (1940). The CCC was called upon to build the waterworks and roads that make the refuges functional and accessible to the public, and stocked over 1 billion fish in lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams.

In sum, the New Deal was a halcyon period for natural resource conservation and public health improvements, initiating a broad spectrum of programs to solve the environmental and health challenges facing the United States at the time. Given advances in resource management, ecology and other sciences, and the hard lessons of past failures, a Green New Deal today would do many things differently.  On balance, however, the federal response in the 1930s was extremely positive for the nation, both raising awareness of the problems and setting in motion concrete efforts to solve them. The moral of the story is America’s capacity to take dramatic action when confronted with challenges as great as the Dust Bowl, World War II, and climate change.  

A brief bibliography on New Deal conservation