Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A university lecturer has proposed creating a state sanctioned volunteer army of youth conservationists, to harness the green enthusiasm of young people.
National service for the environment and a Green New Deal to fight climate change – Imagine newsletter #1
March 29, 2019 3.31am AEDT
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A national service for the environment
Michelle Bloor, Principal Lecturer and Environmental Programme Manager at University of Portsmouth, argues that a volunteer force of conservationists could offer experience and training to young people and ensure there are eager applicants for the vital work of helping the world’s species and habitats most threatened by climate change.
Young people could get on the act straightaway, from replanting mangrove swamps in Vietnam and helping reintroduce beavers in Scotland to measuring coastal pollution in Senegal.Bloor groups the work a national service for the environment could cover into four categories:
Data collection – by surveying wildlife abundance or measuring water quality in lakes and rivers, volunteers could help scientists understand how ecosystems are changing.
Green construction – restoring wooded habitat could absorb carbon and create corridors which connect pockets of wildlife in fragmented habitats. Large-scale construction projects could involve volunteers working on habitat highways – green corridors which help wildlife cross road networks.
Species reintroduction – helping ecosystem engineers, such as beavers, return could help the process of expanding natural habitats. These animal recruits could create new dams and lakes, which provide new opportunities for more species to thrive.
Reforestation – humans have cut down three trillion trees since the dawn of agriculture – around half the trees on Earth. A mass reforestation effort would need plenty of volunteers worldwide, something a youth volunteer force could supply. In the UK, increasing total forest cover to 18% could soak up one third of the required carbon emission cuts needed by 2050, according to the 2008 Climate Change Act.
Change in the forest and woodland cover of England over the last 1,000 years. DEFRA, Author provided
Read more: National service for the environment – what an army of young conservationists could achieve
…A national service for the environment would see individuals taking a direct role in mitigating climate change, but there is also an emerging political project aiming to capitalise on public support for action.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/national-service-for-the-environment-what-an-army-of-young-conservationists-could-achieve-113276
I suspect a lot of that green enthusiasm would drain away very quickly after the young green national service volunteers discover cellular reception is a bit spotty in their particular section of bug infested swamp.
But many I’m being too cynical – perhaps this would be a real opportunity for young greens to actually do something, work off some of that energy.
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There are many opportunities to volunteer — both my wife and I do.
I suggest looking in the local paper, and get off your backend.
A National Service – – No. No. And Hell No!
What could go wrong?
This just stinks of indoctrination. Hilter Youth for greenies.
The don’t plant trees because they like trees any more, it’s to “absorb carbon”. Clearly their main mission is to convert every issue into a “carbon” issue and get kids even more indoctrinated with their fake “science”.
Data collection by untrained, coerced teenagers on sporadic projects will be of no use to any scientist.
my first thought too, wonder if they’ll get a free brownshirt to go with their slave labour?
Unfortunately it would appear that we never learn from our past mistakes and as such are destined to repeat them
Or a little red book. These state youth organisations really are the preserve of totalitarianism – Hitler Youth, Red Guards, Young Pioneers, the Communist Youth League of Kampuchea.
Nah! A new label for group think and oppression. “The Green Shirts”.
Maybe minus the r.
Geen Shirts?
Or did I get that wrong?
Auto
+1
Oh I don’t know.. back in the 80’s while in high school and captivated by the real world, I bought into it all. I cleaned reserves of rubbish, I hauled bikes and shopping trolleys from the coastline’s waters and did all manner of things to help nature.
It opened my eyes to the unintended consequences of good intentions. As I mentioned here before I watched us drag all the homes of these sea creatures away to throw them on trucks, leaving countless organisms to die slowly in the hot sun and when we left there was sterile, lifeless sand. Perfect for the human aesthetic .. useless to the marine creatures who were using our rubbish as homes and food.
The car bodies removed displaced lizards and geckos, the piles of paper displaced native roaches and termites, the cans, bottles.. I saw so much death and destruction of the things I cared about, all to make it pretty for us.
Do we screech and moan because deciduous plants leaves turn gold and red and fall? No, why not? They’re pumping those leaves full of the metabolic waste products they’d accumulated that season – basically they’re taking a dump .. Do we fuss and moan because dead seaweed washes up on our beaches, or do we haul of this waste and use it for our own benefit.
One creatures waste is food for another. Maybe these volunteers (if they get any) will similarly have their eyes opened to the hypocrisy and dangers of blindly following Green leaders as they blunder across the landscape imposing their anthropomorphic view of the world on the creatures around them. Next time you see a rubbish dump take a deep breath – that smell is the smell of countless lifeforms taking advantage of us and our output. Realize those places as disgusting as they are to us are possibly the most intensely populated zones you’ll ever see – all the mice, rats, roaches, bugs, beetles, fungi, bacteria, gulls – sure disgusting to us, but damned if I can think of a more intense concentration of life if I try.
Yes, but…
ALL education of kids under a certain age (at least 10 and for Millennials it seems to be 40) is indoctrination. Even the physics concept of “gravity” is still indoctrination in that we call it “gravity” instead of, say, “mushrooms”.
The real issue is what the kids indoctrination should be focused upon. The Greatest failed the Boomer generation and the Boomer generations followed along and failed the Millennial generation. Thus allowing the Left and the Greens to put in place their agenda — right under your noses.
Is it any wonder the kids including Boomers, Millennials and Gen Z generations are wondering around in the fog of deceit of the Left from “social justice” to “hate crimes” to “white evil” to …
History has proven the old Jesuit saying of ‘give me a child until they are 10 and I’ll show you the adult’.
It will take a monumental shock to change the paradigm the Left has set in place for those generations. Sadly, it typically ends with the followers falling into turmoil, chaos and destruction clearly evident today in Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Venezuela. Interestingly, the folks that caused/allowed this to happen will be dead by the time this occurs meaning the Millennials and Gen Z will fully pay the price of our collective failures to properly indoctrinate them. This is irony where the victims clamor for their own misery.
Gravity is real my friend otherwise you would be happier stepping on the scale and could jump off the Earth and fly through the air without wings
Gravity is not real – certainly not as real as not flying through the air without wings
Gravity just happens to be a pretty accurate way of describing not flying through the air without wings, but jealous earth spirits, given a mathematical bent, would work just as well
Gravity is part of a narrative that explains and predicts. Its is not what it explains, nor what it predicts,
Those are far more real.
Gravity is a scientific story
It exists in a completely different space to the ‘real world’ .
It works for now., That is its sole merit against any other story.
It has no truth content beyond that.
‘This just stinks of indoctrination. Hilter Youth for greenies. ‘
Yep. They’re pretty much using his methods as a primer.
Maybe we need a ‘Green Swastika of the Week’ award.
“helping reintroduce beavers in Scotland ” and “Species reintroduction – helping ecosystem engineers, such as beavers…”
They mentioned Beaver’s twice…Is this a freudian slip, hoping the youth of today will work as hard as a beaver? They cut down tree’s and build dams everywhere they go, something the greens will be horrified to find out if they implement more beavers. Not that I don’t like beavers… they probably did more to terraform their habitat more and change the surface of the good Earth than any species until Man.
Earthling2 March 31, 2019 at 10:14 pm
There are two types of Beaver, North American and Eurasian. The American type was introduced in Finland in the 1930s. Seems there was a shortage of Eurasian Beavers.
not sure which type of Beaver is being reintroduced into Scotland.
michael
European I would hope. At the time they introduced North American Beavers in Finland they were considered just a subspecies. They are not. They are a separate species and can’t interbreed with European Beavers.
Argentina introduced beavers in its southerly region with catastrophic results, and with no apparent way of significantly reducing their numbers.
You’re right, Roger. These beavers turned a lot of valleys into impassable swamps. Beaver Fever, anyone? (giardia-produces organ destruction and explosive diarriha). The only cure would be to now introduce the beavers natural enemy, no, not them, I’m thinking beaver trappers! Think those Green Kids want to go?
“They mentioned Beaver’s twice”
No, they mentioned beavers twice. They didn’t mention beaver’s at all.
Thanks, Jeff, although only those who were taught to properly read and understand what’s in front of them, and thus , actually quote it properly, even know what you refer to. Sadly, those people are now mostly over 60, now that we’ve endured 2+ generations of look-say, Dolsch method, word memorization, etc., reading instruction, which has been an ongoing crime against students, and against the general public’s ability to think well enough to think critically. Reading almost any comments section, almost anywhere, as well as too many of the articles themselves, is enough to make one weep over what’s been lost, regarding the average literacy level. It never had to be, and it shouldn’t be, this way. Thanks a little, public “education”.
They mentioned Beaver’s (sic) twice
So? The first mention of beavers was as an example of how “Young people could get on the act straightaway” and the second mention was as part of a breakdown “into four categories” showing which of the 4 categories the reintroduction of beavers would fall into. I don’t see any particular problem with the number of times they mentioned beavers. There’s plenty to criticize about this new iteration of the Hilter Youth/Red Guard/etc, the number of times it mentions beavers isn’t one of them.
Hey Kids!
Want to live in a tent?
Like having to prepare and cook your own meals? Without microwave ovens?
Want to learn how to have indepth conversations about DEET?
Fancy several days at a time completely cut off from all forms of the internet?
Ever desired to get a full two weeks or more behind your friends on all the latest television?
Want to see the next Marvel movie AFTER the spoilers have all come out?
Want to… Kids? Kids?? KIDS?!?!!
Oh well, we tried.
Craig,
After “Like having to prepare and cook your own meals”, you forgot “Like having to clean up your own mess and leave the place looking like it did before you arrived”. That includes toiletry!
Good luck trying to find enough young people to sign up for that. No wonder they want to tie it to the force of government.
“Snowflakes” and “nature” will not likely co-exist for more than 6 hours max.
Don’t mention all the vaccinations they’ll have to get all the time.
Used to call it the Boy Scouts.
Unless it comes with a #hashtag and can be done in 200 characters or less, sign up may be spotty…
don’t we already have the youth conservation corps?
LET’S NOT!!!
Chairman Mao.
These people pushing youth indoctrination should know this is a path previously taken by the Maoists that eventually culminated in their great leap backward. What happens when the youth waving their little green iThingy turn on their teachers and the Capitalist roaders i.e. the people espousing Socialism while getting rich in pseudo-markets flogging carbon credits and expensive energy while flying in private jets to their winter playgrounds to escape the cold in their private jets all the while miring the youth in debt.
My thoughts too. This is how Mao’s Red Guard of easily indoctrinated youth began.
The Gulag New Deal pay them to be guards at the re-education camps.
Zero correlation with Hilter’s youth movement?
In the UK for decades there has been volunteer groups conserving the environment at a local level.
I used spend spare time working outdoors for the National Trust, my favorite activity being rhododendron-bashing.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/our-cause
Whilst the marginal impact of volunteering on a small area is large, the marginal impact on a small island of hundreds of thousands manually toiling is very small. The idea is that untrained people planting trees will make a difference to global emissions is laughable. The advocates of “saving the planet” have failed to create a policies that will deliver anywhere near their desired outcomes.
It’s about indoctrination and votes…that’s all.
Actually the idea will be to use untrained volunteers overseen by knowledgeable experts. That is a well trodden pathway with Trees for Life (www.treesforlife.org) having had planting days for its Caledonian Forest projects for over 30 years and the Carrifran Project has regenerated a southern Scottish glen within a decade (see http://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk ).
There is tried and tested evidence that this can work and all the reactionary old people on here can pooh pooh all they want, it is a suggestion for young people, not all the old farts who mouth off here.
You old folks of course have perfect insight into how to engage young folks, no doubt using army-style discipline and subjugation.
Any sane new National Service proposals will have a suite of options, of which this would be one. There could be construction work, social work, projects abroad, horticultural work, working with special needs, many many more.
Come on you genii, stop whingeing about the young and show how superior you all are by engaging them without indoctrination.
As you judge supposed indoctrination of others, others will judge you. Harshly, as you are all so brilliant that nothing less thsn step change brilliance will do…..
Here’s a nice pat on the head. Now go have your Mom change your nappy.
the kids who want to volunteer are already doing it, in Aus they t promoted this to younger gen -at 30 when i offered to help i was told insurance made it too hard to accept.
so insuring young who were far more yto manage doing themselves an injury was easier?
the planting the easy bit the ongoing watering and weedings the killer
and the majority cost of planting is?
the treegaurds! which must be used in aus due to rabbits/roos
Rhys Jaggar – April 1, 2019 at 2:32 am
Rhys J, it was silly, naïve and oxymoronic for you to claim that ….. “There is tried and tested evidence that this can work” …… followed by ….. “no doubt using army-style discipline and subjugation”
Iffen your “tried and tested” method works ……. then why does military have to employ discipline and subjugation?
And why doesn’t your method work for teachers and administrators in the public school systems?
Taken in logical order for response:
A) “Come on you genii, stop whingeing about the young”
Once again, leftists project their own issues to others; Rhys fails to link or quote any articles here on WUWT where someone is “whingeing about the young” as a whole.
B) “all the reactionary old people on here can pooh pooh all they want, it is a suggestion for young people, not all the old farts who mouth off here.” Rhys apparently has access to demographics that most of do not have.
* i) Note also, Rhys’s projection upon WUWT visitors, “reactionary old people on here can pooh pooh”
* ii) Rhys applies another demographic label that must stem from projection. Visitors here may include conservatives; but, very very few of the participating visitors here express opposition to progress, science, logic or even being liberal. That ignorant extreme leftist liberals are taken to task is not opposition to people being liberal.
C) “You old folks of course have perfect insight into how to engage young folks, no doubt using army-style discipline and subjugation.” Rhys again applies his mysterious knowledge of demographics with a direct ad hominem logical fallacy.
* i) Tell us WUWT visitors Mr. Rhys, how many years you have spent directly working with youth, and with which organizations?
* ii) Then tell us all about how successful you were.
* iii) Do tell us mr. Rhys, exactly how any non military organization is able to use “army-style discipline and subjugation”? Every public youth organization must operate under the watchful eyes of parents, religious and Law Enforcement.
Myself? I have over twenty years working with several youth organizations, including the Boy Scouts, along with another couple of decades working with religious youth groups.
So you declaim, so should you demonstrate exactly how you are any different.
1) “supposed indoctrination of others”, nothing “supposed” about it. Forcing climate change religion upon the impressionable is “forced indoctrination”. Especially when the climate change cult requires discarding logic, observations and proper scientific process.
You, Rhys have judged. Alleged brilliance is not demonstrated,only insinuated.
Compared to Rhys, just about everyone counts as right wing.
Why am I not surprised to find out that Rhys is all for forced indoctrination and enslavement of the young.
Climate impact from this massive youth-indoctrination project = ZERO
The whole idea is based on the false premise that the environment is broken. The best thing humanity can do for the environment and Earth’s biosphere is to continue restoring atmospheric CO2 to the higher levels the Earth has enjoyed for billions of years, avoiding catastrophic plant starvation.
One of the worst things humans can do to the planet is lower the concentration of atmospheric CO2 while teaching our youth to be good little obedient citizens for the ruling leftists.
Despicable!
It will also be the only way to get franchise.
For further details see “Starship Troopers” by Robert A. Heinlein
“National service for the environment ”
Yes, great. A National Lip Service, led by AOC.
In Germany, Hitler Jugend.
In USSR, Pioneers
And now… Climae Jugend ?
Gets me so nauseous, might as well call in sick.
Heil, CO2.
Ah yes – the Greenshirts…
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/tony-thomas-die-grunshirts-parachute-into-parkville/
Harnessing the power of stupidity. On our side we never thought of that as a solution to the energy problem.
It’s infinite and renewable.
Despite the claimed intentions, this Youth Climate Change National Service is nothing else than an industrialization step of the climate church in order to achieve a planetary youth brainwashing.
What will be the next step if temperatures or CO2 do not conform to the climatistas’ belief ?
It sounds o k provided it is strictly voluntary and provide it doesn’t morph into a latter-day version of the Komsomol:
https://www.abc.net.au/tv/carboncops/
A few years ago at work the company ran a scheme for all employees attendance was called “voluntary” I know of one employee who volunteered not to go and was under threat of disciplinary action if they didn’t go, can just see the same thing happening with this. Or it could be like those nice “reeducation” camps that China said didn’t exist but OH yes they do.
James Bull
Likewise.
I worked for a large outfit that had a ‘corporate social responsibility’ scheme that included volunteering , and to be fair, you could do it on company time.
The mistake they made was to include participation in the volunteering as a mandatory objective in the performance appraisal process.
The staff swiftly protested against the oxymoron of ‘mandatory volunteering’ and it was quietly dropped.
How the hell is he not sacked for brainwashing students with left wing ideology?
Kind of like the Hitlerjugend. Boy, these clowns are finding it harder and harder to hide their totalitarian nature.
All they need to add is a uniform and salute, just like the Nazis and Communists did with their youth brigades.
Trump should respond with ‘oh, you want National Service, I’ll give you National Service – conscription – they can help build our wall!’.
“Trump should respond with ‘oh, you want National Service, I’ll give you National Service – conscription – they can help build our wall!’.”
Speaking of the wall. One of Trump’s advisors seems to have come up with a viable way to stop the flood of illegal aliens trying to cross into the United States.
The roadblock is there are not enough immigration judges to handle all the people trying to enter, and so these people are released into the U.S. pending a hearing before an immigration judge, which could take months or years to be scheduled, and in the meantime the illegals disappear into the U.S. and never even see an immigration judge. The illegal aliens know this and it is why they are coming in droves with the added incentive that it looks like Trump is going to close the border to them one way or another.
It seems that the Trump advisor is saying that Border Patrol agents can be trained as immigration judges, and can then make a decision on each illegal alien’s claim of asylum in just a few days and if they don’t qualify (90 percent don’t qualify) then they can be deported immediately instead of being released into the United States. If a halt to releasing illegal aliens into the U.S. is put in place, most of the illegal aliens will stop coming. That’s their incentive and we need to take it away.
President Trump should put enough U.S. military troops on the border to give the Border Patrol agents the opportunity to be trained as immigraion judges, and should implement this strategy as quickly as possible. We must stop releasing illegal aliens into the United States.
The criminals in Mexico are apparently using a technique where they send a bunch of illegals across the border which occupies the time of Border Patrol agents and then the criminals cross the US border a couple of miles away while the Border Patrol agents are busy. We ought to put as many U.S. military on the border to stop this technique as it requires. The criminals are bringing in drugs and prostituting children and women and I can’t think of a better use of U.S. troops in peacetime that putting a stop to this insanity on our southern border.
The beauty of training Border Agents to decide whether an asylum claim is legitimate or not is we don’t have to consult the crazy obstructive Democrat congress to get it done.
Train the Border agents. Put the U.S. military on the southern border in force. And stop the flow.
If I had kids….they’d get them over my dead body. Homeschool, people – PLEASE homeschool. Teach your kids to think for themselves.
Get to think of it…
Here, continental school program is actually named after AGENDA 21.
Let’s se how it evolves, kid is only 9 old.
It’s hardly surprising that in Germany, home schooling is illegal.
A British spin on FDR’s CCC during the Great Depression. Reforestation is always good.
But, typically British, never mentioning FDR’s New Deal based on the Glass-Steagall Banking Act and the Reconstruction Finance Corp using the US Constitution.
The City of London, busily turning Brexit into a giant tax-haven scheme, have a huge problem with FDR.
Anyway it is clear now where AOC’s GND comes from – the UK, not the USA.
I’d ask the keen people at ukcolumn.org, down the road from Portsmouth, at Plymouth.
“Reforestation is always good”
Depends on what trees you use. The eucalypt plantations in southern Europe seem to mostly work as wildfire generators and wildlife extermination zones.
But perhaps that is what is wanted…
The New Deal was a bad deal all around.
Grew government and helped nobody.
My grandparents used to yell about how they should have never got rid of national service. Now it appears my contemporaries are saying the same thing. Tragedy to farce, history repeats.
They say it skips a generation…
…D’you know, I had them girls in
The back of the cab the other week?
Sick all over the back seat
I had to charge ’em double
They oughta bring back the birch
You know, bring back national service
Bring back hanging, hanging
Hanging’s too good for ’em…
— Shampoo – Shiny Black Taxi Cab (A bit obscure, but it’s what I thought of reading your post regarding ” yell about how they should have never got rid of national service”)
You spelled “Indoctrination” wrong.
Also, let’s create a corp of green brownshirts. What could possibly go wrong.
Planting trees is hard work. No doubt it would do these greenie youngsters a world of good to do that for a few years.
A youth movement for a totalitarian ideology? Where have we seen that before? Under the fuhrung by gauleiter Gore, perhaps. Some people never learn from history. It starts with planting trees, it ends with killing enemies of the ideology.
The CCC was a program responding to a real situation, the Depression, and to some extent, the Dust Bowl. This proposal, while it might look good on the surface is based on a lie, manmade climate change. Its purpose appears to be more one of indoctrination, though clearly some of the work they might do would be beneficial, both environmentally and for the youth signing up for it. The bottom line: any program which is based on lies is one that deserves never to see the light of day.
The CCC was one of the few governmental programs that succeeded exceptionally well. There are several reasons:
1. It was mostly restricted to young, unmarried, unemployed men.
2. It was run by the Army.
3. Recruits were paid $30 per month with $25 of that sent home to support families.
4. Education and training in a variety of skills from mechanics to newsletter printing were promoted.
5. After ten years when it no longer was needed the program was defunded by Congress.
None of these things would fly in today’s political climate.
You can’t put these young people into a required work force. You’ll damage their nails, their hair and their electronic toys, never mind their fragile egos that are only held together with daily doses of peculiar psychotropic chemicals.
This is a very, very bad idea. (/sarc off)
No need to step out of the comfort zone kids – mother nature has it covered without the use of zeolots
Satellite data shows an eleven percent growth in global leaf area from 1982 to 2010. Scientists attribute most of this growth to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Which was that Chinese province that planted so many trees that all the dams went dry? Seems to have escaped the media news.
“A national service for the environment would see individuals taking a direct role in mitigating climate change”
Well, I can’t argue against what is proposed. We can always use more information about the environment, and protecting animals is a good thing (what about those windmills, kids?) and reforestration is beneficial, and the really good thing about this particular proposal is it doesn’t cost 100 TRILLION dollars to implement! This is the way young people *should* fight “climate change”, the harmless way.
Except that the ends don’t justify the means (lying). And of course it wouldn’t cost 100 trillion. Notice though, that cost was never mentioned. That’s because Greenie weenies don’t like or understand economics, and make no mistake; the costs would be considerable.
I don’t think anything like this is going to get off the ground. Kids have better things to do nowadays.
But I *would* like to see the kids go monitor the windmill farms and Big Solar in their area and use noisemakers or some other method (arm waving?) to scare the birds and bats off before they get chopped up by the windmills or fried by the Solar. That would be a worthy effort and will give the kids a sense of accomplishment. As well it should.
And when their noisemakers and arm waving fail to save the birds and bats, they can then clean up the mess left behind. That too will be a worthy effort and will give the kids a sense of the cost to the environment of wind/solar. As well it should.