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President Abraham Lincoln, whose memory we are honoring this week, observed in his State of the Union message in 1862 that “ [a] nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws.” “The territory,” he said, “is the only part which is of certain durability.”

In recent years, however, we have come to realize that what Lincoln called our “territory”—that is, our land, air, water, minerals, and the like—is not of “certain durability” after all. Instead, we have learned that these natural resources are fragile and finite, and that many have been seriously damaged or despoiled.

To put it another way, we realized that self-destructive tendencies were endangering the American earth during the 1960s in much the same way as conflicting political forces had endangered the body politic during the 1860s.

When we came to office in 1969, we tackled this challenge with all the power at our command. Now, in 1973, I can report that America is well on the way to winning the war against environmental degradation—well on the way to making our peace with nature.

Day by day, our air is getting cleaner. In virtually every one of our major cities, the levels of air pollution are declining.

Month by month, our water pollution problems are also being conquered, our noise and pesticide problems are yielding to new initiatives, our parklands and protected wilderness areas are increasing. . . .

We can be proud of our record in this field over the past 4 years. But a record is not something to stand on, it is something to build on. Nineteen important natural resources and environmental bills which I submitted to the last Congress were not enacted. In the coming weeks, I shall once again send these urgently needed proposals to the Congress so that the unfinished environmental business of the 92nd Congress can become the first environmental achievements of the 93rd Congress. . . .

The energy crisis was dramatized by fuel shortages this winter. We must face up to a stark fact. We are now consuming more energy than we produce in America. A year and a half ago I sent to the Congress the first Presidential message ever devoted to the energy question. I shall soon submit a new and far more comprehensive energy message containing wide-ranging initiatives to insure necessary supplies of energy at acceptable economic and environmental costs. In the meantime, to help meet immediate needs, I have temporarily suspended import quotas on home heating oil east of the Rocky Mountains. . . .

Second, because there are no local or State boundaries to the problems of our environment, the Federal Government must play an active, positive role. We can and will set standards. We can and will exercise leadership. We are providing necessary funding support. And we will provide encouragement and incentive for others to help with the job. But Washington must not displace State and local initiatives. We shall expect the State and local governments—along with the private sector—to play the central role in this field.

Third, the costs of pollution should be more fully met in the free marketplace, not in the Federal budget. For example, the price of pollution control devices for automobiles should be borne by the owner and the user, not by the general taxpayer. People should not have to pay for pollution they do not cause.

I include Nixon’s comments about energy policy because they are still so relevant today and because they show how little has actually been done since the need for action was first recognized in 1973, over thirty years ago. Both Johnson and Nixon were riding an environmental wave, generated by recognition of the impact that industrial growth was having on air, water, and the countryside, and by concerns about the impact of this pollution on human health. Strangely, this was an issue that had not been a part of the public policy debate earlier. One of the main forces driving this wave was Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring, which spoke out about the impact of pesticides on the