beautification committees in many states and cities, and brought together diverse Americans of multiple professions to use their skills to make our country more beautiful.
We passed more conservation legislation than ever before in our history, including protection for Wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers. We banished billboards and auto junkyards from our interstate system and reduced their presence on other thoroughfares. We passed clean air and water legislation. We stood for bold new ideas like burying powerlines to increase the aesthetic values in our cities.
We revitalized our nation’s capitol, long an embarrassment for foreign visitors, beginning with the poorest sections of the city. We committed ourselves to increasing parklands and green space. We talked of a national program of bikeways and pathways connecting our cities and offering new recreational opportunities. We called for an educational commitment to understand ecology and the necessity of conservation. We called for shifting agricultural subsidies to support small and sustainable farming operations.
Stirred by such commitments and by an upsurge of new organizations like the Sierra Club (with its stunning coffee-table volumes celebrating the American earth), millions of us, from Scout troops to garden clubs, from architects to wildlife managers, from artists and musicians to ordinary citizens of all varieties, were drawn by the dream of beauty and found ways to do our parts.
Exactly 50 years ago, President Johnson declared 1967 “The Year of Youth for Natural Beauty and Conservation,” and youth responded, planting millions of trees, cleaning up tons of waste and, eventually, organizing the great Earth Day event in 1970, when 20 million Americans protested environmental degradation and demanded a new era of protection.
It was a time of optimism, when we believed in our government and in each other, when we truly believed that progress in quality of life and spiritual growth need not be sacrificed to utilitarian economic goals.
We didn’t get all we sought and the Vietnam War intervened to reduce both our trust in government and the resources we could commit to beautify our land. But we started. Now is time to build on that legacy and complete the mission.
With several colleagues, I am organizing a new campaign, And Beauty for All, to finish what Johnson began. We advocate: