Jan. 30, 2012 — Neil M. Maher discusses his book, “Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement” (2008). Maher, an associate professor of history at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University in Newark, shows how the CCC helped transform the conservationist tradition in the U.S. into what we can recognize today as the modern environmental movement. In the interview, Maher explains what “planning” looked like in the 1930s, describes how the New Deal’s most popular program came under fire from wilderness advocates and ecologists alike towards the end of that decade, and imagines what a Green New Deal might look like today.
Note: The above dateline refers to this interview’s original airdate on WRCT-Pittsburgh. It was uploaded unchanged to Remapping Debate in February 2013.