Not everyone can or wants to live in cities. Life in cities and most suburban areas is dirty, noisy, expensive, ugly, and dangerous. Not everyone is going to be a software engineer, work at Starbucks, or own a food truck. Most people have no desire to be an "entrepreneur." Jobs are not going to materialize out of thin air, green or otherwise. Local governments must take the initiative to solve their own local problems. What is good for the local citizens must take precedence over corporate or government interests.
In lieu of a new Works Projects Administration or Civilian Conservation Corps, local governments can address the problems of homelessness, food security, and unemployment by creating a way for people to return to rural areas, from whence we all came. The Eco Rangers will take out-of-shape, confused, depressed, stressed-out individuals of all ages and backgrounds and provide them with the opportunity to get out of the urban malaise. These individuals will educated and physically trained to become self-sufficient, possess a variety of useful skills, and perform useful and necessary work.
These skills will include basic survival, habitat restoration, reforestation, invasive plant and animal removal, bio-remediation of depleted, contaminated, and disturbed soils, construction and maintenance of solar, wind, methane energy systems, basic homemaking skills (basketry and weaving are as complex as writing code), remodeling/replacing rural infrastructure, organic agriculture, biomass production, humane animal husbandry, and homesteading. Modeled on and perhaps working with the California Conservation Corps, the Eco Rangers will be part jobs program, part physical/mental rehabilitation project to treat NDD (Nature Deficit Disorder), and part rural resettlement project.
|
