Obama is creating a new kind of public service. (With a little help from Roosevelt and Kennedy.)

Barack Obama is a green-energy nut. It’s not because he’s a conservationist—his legislative record doesn’t suggest anything beyond the normal progressive votes. It’s not because he’s an Al Gore disciple—Obama won’t get near the former VP’s idyllic 10-year, 100-percent-carbon-free energy plan. It’s not because he likes whispering sweet nothings to the eco-lobby—his support of clean coal is derided. No, Barack Obama hypes clean energy because he’s convinced it’s a pragmatic step to make the country safer and help energize the economy. He has repeatedly said that once he backs the economy down off its ledge, he’s going to push a major energy stimulus through Congress.

Likewise, Barack Obama is a public-service nut. Civic engagement is a consistent go-to solution for many of his thorniest problems. College affordability? One hundred hours of community service each year translates to a yearly stipend of 4,000 college bucks. Not enough jobs for young people who just graduated or who have dropped out of school? Increase the size of AmeriCorps more than three-fold. Oil-addicted citizenry and economy? Create an energy call-to-action that rivals the original Apollo Program. Making people work for their handouts is the way a pragmatic leader makes peace with his liberalism. (See: Roosevelt, Franklin Delano.)

It’s in this new Apollo Program—which we’ll name the Demeter Project, in honor of the Greek god of harvest and nature—that Obama finds an opportunity to blend his three top priorities: the economy, clean energy, and national service. Obama first laid out his energy plan in October 2007, well before the economy was showing high-profile signs of stress. The plan has stayed more or less the same, with the fulcrum being a $150 billion investment to create 5 million new jobs.

In his original energy speech in October 2007, Obama explained that transitioning to a green economy “will take time, [it] will take sacrifice, and [it] will take a sustained commitment from the American people.” Yet the plan doesn’t demand much sacrifice. History suggests companies won’t switch to greener practices on their own, so Obama offers to hold their hand: $1 billion for manufacturing centers to convert to clean-energy meccas, $7,000 tax credits for people who buy hybrids, etc. By making green business profitable, Obama thinks he can entice business to create new jobs, which will bring the laid-off masses back into the work force. That, in turn, will lift a country out of recession. It’s Keynesian economics for the 21^st century.

In an interview with Time, Obama admitted his approach is rooted in classic liberalism. “We’ve got to give some folks some incentive so they can start making the right decisions,” he told Joe Klein. Obama isn’t only recruiting troops for a green army. He’s also willing to recruit mercenaries.

Yet for obvious reasons, Obama and the green community speak about the members of the Demeter Project in much loftier terms. For Obama, they’re the patriotic leaders of a movement that will free America from its addiction to foreign oil and make it a more flexible and responsible global player. To bolster his call-to-action rhetoric, Obama implies some will even volunteer their services to the movement. He plans to create a GreenCorps of people who will be paid very small wages to work with nonprofits and, among other activities, weatherize homes. It’s unclear how many low-paid, pseudo-volunteers Obama would initiate, but it would be fewer than 175,000. (That’s the number of new AmeriCorps positions Obama wants to create, of which GreenCorps would take up an unknown number.) If there’s anybody who is close to making a sacrifice in the Demeter Project, it’s these GreenCorps members, yet their population will pale in comparison to the mercenaries’.