Imagine a bold national (and potentially trans-partisan) campaign around beauty. Imagine a program like that of FDR’s CCC that puts thousands of former coal miners to work restoring the 530 cut-off mountaintops of Appalachia instead of trying to wrest more coal from them. Such a program might be expensive, but not so costly as the trillions a new government report says we will lose to global warming. It could beautify those marvelous mountains again, while turning them from carbon producers to carbon sinks, providing work and hope for many who struggle with poverty and opioids, and vastly improve health in the unhealthiest corner of America.
The poet Goethe once wrote: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it/Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Let us dream boldly of making America beautiful again. It may or may not save the world, but it will almost certainly make us happier.
John de Graaf is an author, award-winning documentary filmmaker and president of Take Back Your Time, an organization fighting overwork and time poverty in America. He is also the National Outreach Coordinator for And Beauty For All.