When this decade began, we had no national wilderness system, no Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, no system of national trails. We had a fairly good national park system, but only one national seashore (Cape Hatteras). In the magnificent last nine years we've added six more national seashores: Cape Cod, Cape Lookout, Point Reyes, Fire Island, Padre Island and Assateague, plus Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Since 1961, four new national parks have been acquired -- Redwoods, North Cascades, Canyonlands and Guadalupe Mountains. In fact, of the 28 million acres in the National Park System, 2.4 million acres, or nearly 9 per cent, have been added in the 1960s. On paper, at least, we have all these things and more:
 

In the past, I've made a lot of "point with pride" speeches about how grand it is that at last we've begun to improve our environment. Yet I think I've been fooling myself and my listeners with the belief that this legislation and these wonderful new attitudes and all this good, noble talk is really doing the job. There are some unpleasant realities to be faced now, and if I sound like some evangelist preacher in this report, I hope you'll forgive me, for I intend to say some things which may be unpalatable to many.

On a cloudless October day this year, I drove along Skyline Drive north of Tucson and looked out to the South, one of my favorite views. For the first time in my 30 years of residence in my favorite city, the Santa Rita Mountains were nowhere to be seen. Similar experiences in other parts of Arizona and the United States dramatically remind me that instead of winning the fight for clean air and clean water and a decent environment on this planet, we are in fact losing all of these fights. Conditions are far worse today than they were in 1961, and the way we're going, they'll be even worse a year from now.

Before I get into some of the specifics which concern me, let me give you some of the cold, tough realities as I see them:
 

We hear a lot of talk about our American heritage and what we'll leave our children and grandchildren. The ancient Athenians had an oath that read in part:
 

This is similar to the old Biblical philosophy of "stewardship." What a wise doctrine it is! My father and his father knew what it meant. As a boy in rural northern Arizona, I often went camping with my family. Before we could leave a campsite, we had to improve the fireplace, build a path to the stream, or bury someone else's garbage. The idea was the same as the concept of the Athenians: leave the place a little better than you found it.

I thought about this as I flew my airplane into Phoenix last month, descending through layers of foul-looking haze and smog. That's not the way I remember Phoenix as a boy. It's not even the way I remember it 10 years ago. And I thought about some of the places in Arizona which have changed for the worse just in my personal experience.

One of my favorite places in this state has always been the White Mountains area, with its crystal-clear fishing streams and its magnificent, uncluttered wilderness area. This beautiful, isolated region, however, has increasingly experienced the blight of decay and pollution brought on by the era of the vacation home, resort development, and the easy trip from Phoenix or Tucson.

We're all the poorer for it, not only because we've lost some of the beauty of that country, but because we've also lost the knowledge that it was there to be seen and experienced. You might say it was part of our psychological environment.

In 1940, when I was a college student in Tucson, Sabino Canyon was another favorite spot of mine -- a great place to go for a cool swim on a hot day. Today, despite the best efforts of the Forest Service, I'm not too sure I'd feel safe walking among the broken bottles and beer cans or swimming in the possibly polluted water of the Canyon.

When I think about these things I get good and angry. And I can understand why young people might ask with some vehemence whether we're really proud of the garbage, foul air, dirty water, hopelessly contaminated food, unsafe beaches and empty fishing streams which make up so much of their "heritage." I think members of my father's generation could honestly say that they left you and me an Arizona that was as good, or a little better, than they had received it. But members of my generation will have to act, and act fast, if we hope to make that kind of report.

Yet Arizona is more fortunate than most other states. Our

Consider the dilemma of the states bordering Lake Erie. A vital part of their natural environment, this lake is not just another lake. It is one of the Great Lakes. And look at it today. Some say it's dead; others that it's merely dying. So much industrial and municipal waste has been dumped into it that the lake can barely support life or cleanse itself through the oxidation of organic matter. It's going through a process with the ugly name of eutrophication -- something no one ever heard of when I was a boy.

Or look at the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland. It may have been less than pure when I was young, but look at it now. It's a fire hazard! The river is so polluted with industrial wastes that it actually caught fire this year, causing $50,000 damage to two railroad bridges.

And then there's the Potomac River, which flows by the City where I work. They tell me there used to be a very popular swimming beach at the Tidal Basin, where the Jefferson Memorial sits today. When the beach was closed to the public to start construction in the 1930s, people staged a protest at the site. Today, if you merely fell in the water, you'd need tetanus shots and face the prospect of hepatitis.

As our society continues to grow and prosper, the beat of "progress" takes its toll. Here are some more examples:
 

I don't want to overemphasize the minuses of our civilization. Technology and science have given us a life far better than anything previously known.

And despite all the pollution, somehow there is much beauty in our world and pleasure in our lives. What I want to talk about now, however, is whether the forces we have unleashed might be gaining momentum to eventually endanger the very conditions which make life possible on Earth.

While man with his magnificent brain is more than an animal, he is still part of the animal kingdom, and his very survival depends on fragile life chains and delicate relationships which are not thoroughly understood. It is my increasing fear that technology (the product of that super computer we call man's brain) may destroy the chain of life. Let me give you some reasons for that fear.

Some years ago, you may have seen the movie On The Beach. In that frightening portrayal we saw the people of Australia and the crew of an American submarine awaiting the first signs of airborne nuclear fallout from a brief war which had destroyed all life in the northern hemisphere At first there was

On the Beach was only a story. Some people even doubt that any nuclear war could totally eliminate life on Earth. But the story had a powerful message which was close enough to reality to give us all pause.

The thing that made it so frightening was our awareness that one thin, fragile atmosphere envelops the entire world. If it goes, we all go with it!

What if I told you that something like that nuclear fallout -- and potentially just as serious a threat -- is occurring throughout the world today? It's true. Strontium 90, iodine 131, and other radioactive isotopes are still floating around, even though most nuclear testing in the atmosphere was terminated several years ago. Carbon dioxide, which normally exists in the atmosphere, is building up to levels which may impede the release of heat into space, drastically altering our climate and upsetting our ecology. Hundreds of millions of tons of deadly gases and particles of all kinds are being released into the air and carried by the winds throughout much of the world, year after year. Some will remain intact and accumulate in the food chains of animal and man until they conceivably could provide a real-life sequel to On the Beach.

Let me prove my point by taking a look at Antarctica, a continent as remote from man's intrusions and pollutions as any place in the world. It has no farms, no factory smokestacks and no automobiles.

Scientists have been doing a tremendous amount of research there in recent years. And what have they discovered? Penguins walking around with DDT in their bodies! Seals, fish and birds which never venture beyond Antarctica are contaminated with DDT and dieldrin and other pesticides that have never been used within thousands of miles of that continent.

The same is true of the Shetland Islands, 100 miles north of Scotland -- a place where pesticides are never used. Tests have shown that the average concentration of pesticides in the rainfall there is equal to that found in the San Joaquin River in California, which drains fields sprayed with pesticides.

Now these are things to worry about. We don't know precisely what DDT will do to the human organism. We do know it settles in fatty tissues, and we're all carrying some of it. Beyond that, we know that in laboratory animals it attacks the central nervous system, upsets body chemistry, distorts cells, accelerates gene mutation, reduces drug effectiveness, affects calcium absorption by the bones, and causes cancer.

We also know that it is terribly durable and persistent. No matter how little DDT you may be carrying around today, you undoubtedly will be carrying more tomorrow, more the next day, and so on. Its dangers are compounded because of what the scientists call the "concentration phenomenon" in the delicate food chains of life.

Minnows eat plankton or mosquitoes; bass eat minnows; birds eat bass; wolves eat birds, etc. If you're the species at the end of the chain you're in bad trouble.

In California, scientists found that a harmless scattering of DDT (0.02 parts per million) in a lake was concentrated 250 times by plankton and another 80 times by the fish which ate the plankton. When they studied the birds poisoned by eating the fish, they found tissues containing 1600 parts per million of DDT.

A number of species of birds are now threatened with extinction because of the effects of this concentration process. And Arizona has banned DDT because seemingly "harmless" levels sprayed on cotton fields reach alfalfa pastures, only to be eaten by cows who concentrate the poison in their milk. If used by expectant mothers, it is concentrated still further, and a stillborn or malformed baby may be the end result.

The problem isn't just with pesticides, as frightening as they may be. It isn't just with the air we breathe, as contaminated as it is. It's with the water we drink, the food we eat, and the complicated set of forces which make life possible for us and for the rest of nature.

Perhaps I am exaggerating all these dangers. I'm not saying that all life will end. I am saying that for the first time mankind has the capacity to alter these fragile interworkings of nature. I'm saying that some of our best scientists are worried because

But nature has always been surprisingly resilient and adjustable. Suppose we don't end it all. Are we doomed to a steadily declining quality of life? As we prepare next month to leave the 1960's and start a new decade, what are our prospects? As I read the script for the '70's, I frankly see a steady degeneration in the availability and quality of good air, water, recreational opportunities, access to nature and all the rest. If we continue on our present course, we may all be alive in 1980, but if life is not more dangerous, it surely will be much more crowded, tasteless and dreary.

My hard counsel is that tough decisions need to be made soon if we are to save our environment. Toes will have to be stepped on, and old, cherished beliefs will have to be reexamined.

Ed Crafts, who used to be director of the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation in the Interior Department, put it this way:
 

It's a big order. I hope we can fill it.

Most of the crucial battles I see ahead will be of the legislative and political kind. They will involve both dramatic debates on national priorities and some drab but important battles on sewage and parks. Let me record some of our current setbacks and some other discouraging prospects.

There is no secret cause of water pollution. It's sewage, an ever-increasing flow of noxious liquid that descends downward by force of gravity to our rivers and lakes and oceans. It can't be eliminated as long as there are cities, factories and people. The only ways to meet the problem are to pass laws prohibiting certain forms of pollution, such as the reckless discharge of industrial wastes, and to build sewage treatment plants to remove the accumulation of other impurities. Unfortunately, sewage plants cost money, and industrial polluters often wield enormous influence. Most taxpayers and most industrial polluters, however much they're against sin and pollution, are unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary, in terms of cold, hard cash, to do the job. So the problem remains unsolved.

Take a look at the most recent example of performance versus promise. In the 1966 Clean Water Act, we determined that just to hold our own on water pollution, one billion Federal dollars would be needed this fiscal year. Mind you, we weren't trying to make our rivers cleaner, just prevent them from getting worse. But the Nixon budget, like the Johnson budget, requested only $214 million -- just over a fifth of the need. Like everyone else, the Budget Bureau hates dirty water, but there's a war on, and inflation, and the race to the moon. Dirty water can wait.

After we mounted a big bi-partisan campaign for the full billion-dollar funding, Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel sent us a letter saying the Administration wouldn't spend the money even if we appropriated it. The final result: a compromise figure of $650 million. Everyone feels better, I guess, but next year more rivers will be unfit to swim or fish in.

Let me give you an even more frustrating example of non-performance. Many of these great new national parks I mentioned earlier exist mainly on paper. Congress has authorized them (i.e., promised to buy the land) but the parks don't exist until we put up the cash. Last year the House Interior Committee, on which I serve, found itself with a backlog of $462 million in parks that we'd authorized but hadn't paid for (including Indiana Dunes and most of Point Reyes) and a Johnson budget of only $45 million for acquisition. So my committee did a clever and responsible thing (seeing the squeeze in the regular budget). We looked around and found that hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into the general fund from royalties on the outer continental shelf oil lands near Louisiana. We drafted a new law which earmarked some of this oil money to bring the Land and Water Conservation Fund up to $200 million a year for five years -- a billion dollars for local, state and Federal parks!

So what happened to this noble effort? A 1969 budget crisis and inflation demanded Federal spending cuts. Vietnam, the military and space got little or no cuts, but parks had to wait. Both the Johnson and Nixon Budget Bureaus have refused to spend the park money we put in the bank for them, and we're assured this policy will continue. Since we don't have enough money to pay for the parks we've already authorized, we've even

This is bad enough, but what's worse is that national parks and seashores already authorized are about to be lost. You've read that Congress has approved a Redwoods National Park, Point Reyes National Seashore, and Indiana Dunes Lakeshore. There is a real danger that none of them will ever become a reality.

I worked my heart out on Indiana Dunes three years ago and managed the House bill. We congratulated ourselves on a magnificent victory. It now looks pretty sour because we don't have the money to buy the land we promised to buy, prices have skyrocketed and there's enormous pressure to build another new steel plant in the middle of the proposed park. The people in San Francisco can tell you a similar anguished tale, for Point Reyes National Seashore may never come into being as it was planned.

It may seem ironic to find an Arizonan so vitally concerned with beaches and dunes, but let me tell you yet another such fight I'm involved in. There's something elemental about the sands where land and water meet. The right of an ordinary citizen to get to a beach when he wants to would seem to be rather basic. But this is rapidly becoming a farce. Of the 8,000 or so miles of shoreline on the frontiers of this nation, only five per cent is available for public use. The other 95 per cent is in private or industrial hands with fences and "Keep Out" signs blocking people from getting to the water.

A bill I've co-sponsored will try to remedy this serious development we've let happen -- and perhaps provide public access to all ocean beaches. It will cost some money, no doubt, and it may step on some toes, but I think it's a long overdue step.

In all these fights it's nice if there are some handy villains on the other side. Conservationists often nominate for that honor the industrialists and business firms who contribute a large share of the pollutants. But it's just not that simple. I've met with heads of the large copper companies, who want to do the right thing in nearly every case. Many of them are willing to take personal risks, to lead their companies in the right direction. But they have stockholders and directors, and they work in a system where the ultimate control lies in the laws of the market place. Many enlightened businesssmen would welcome laws which would require them, and their competitors, to meet strict pollution standards.

Last month we saw the people of Pennsylvania do just that when they demanded that the state air pollution commission set standards that may be the toughest in the nation. If those standards go into effect, it's going to be interesting to see what the giants of the iron and steel industry do about them.

In the past, before passage of the Air Quality Act, state action of that kind would have been impossible. The usual industry response has been: "If you get tough with us, we'll go someplace where we're appreciated." With the prospect of an economy shattered, a tax base eroded, and jobs lost, it's easy to see why local anti-pollution forces have done so poorly through the years.

Ironically, the people concerned about pollution have often found themselves bucking the combined forces of City Hall, the Chamber of Commerce and the major local labor unions. In circumstances like this, you suddenly find this great consensus for clean water isn't quite as strong as you thought.

Here we get to the essence of the problem. Our economic system prides itself on efficiency, productivity and turning out the most for the least. Introduce new cost factors unrelated to efficiency or productivity and you run the risk of pricing your products above the competition, out of the market. In world trade the United States may lose out to cheaper producers, and so forth.

If the steel industry has the liberty to dump its ugly wastes into Lake Michigan or Lake Erie, American companies can produce finished steel for perhaps $145 a ton. But if they had to go to the expense of removing sulphur dioxide from their smoke and processing their liquid wastes before discharge, the price might be $160 a ton. These figures may not impress you, but they might mean something if they result in an additional $30 for your next car.

It's very clear to me that the conservation crusade has lost the battle of national priorities, despite all these great laws I've talked about and all the congratulations the conservationists have given each other. The cause for parks and clean air and water is

I've discussed the billion dollars we didn't get for clean water and the cutback on park funds; let me mention a few other places where we've lost out:
 

On television the other night, I saw an automobile commercial, which gave a glimpse of some really beautiful scenery. It depicted for us a kind of romantic adventure available to car owners in the world of nature. As I watched this slick message from Madison Avenue I wondered if I wasn't looking at the great contradiction of our industrial society -- the drive for the good life which, as a byproduct, most certainly will make the good life impossible. The production and use of that very automobile will result in further pollution of just such dreamlike settings as we saw on the screen.

The time is surely coming when the American public cannot have its cake and eat it too. There can't be more cars and less pollution, more available jet flights and fewer airport noises, regular garbage collection but no garbage dumps or incinerators, more children and less crowded beaches.

The great values and material advantages of our civilization produce byproducts which must be disposed of. Walter Heller, who advised Presidents Johnson and Kennedy, advocates that we discount any so-called "growth" by first deducting the damage it causes:
 

"Growth" and "progress" are among the key words in our national vocabulary. But modern man now carries strontium 90 in his bones, iodine 131 in his thyroid, DDT in his fat, asbestos in his lungs. A little more of this "progress" and "growth," and this man will be dead. Maybe we'd be better off if we slowed down a little and repaired the damages.

Let's consider where we'll be at this time next year. In just 365 days our national production will be up about $35 billion in constant dollars -- that is, discounting any gain resulting from inflation. We already have the highest living standard on the face of the Earth. Even those in poverty would be considered wealthy in most other places.

Suppose we were to decide to keep our living standard the same next year as it was this year. We wouldn't deprive ourselves of any of our present blessings, but we wouldn't spend any more next year than we did this year. Instead, we would pour all of

Unfortunately, however, the taxpayers of this country wouldn't stand for it. We have been so conditioned in this century to having living standards go ever upwards that we can't think of anything else. Every one of us has a long list of unsatisfied wants awaiting fulfillment. Most of us are unwilling to abandon those dreams for some nebulous, distant contribution to what is described as our environment. We're too "practical" for that.

I admit I've painted a pretty grim and discouraging picture. But I want to leave a different message. Each of us has a vital stake in what happens to this spaceship we're riding on. We can save the environment of this Earth. There is a role for every one of us, but time is short and we'd better get busy. What we need is a peaceful revolution. Let me make some specific suggestions how you -- each of you -- can help in that revolution:
 

More important than any of this is a job that each of us can do: re-evaluate our own fundamental attitudes and tastes. The price of a decent environment may be cars with 60 horsepower instead of 360; fewer gadgets; higher taxes, but more fishing streams; fewer cross-country SST's but nicer beaches and forests. In our private lives, we can each pledge to stop being litter bugs, contributing as little garbage and junk as absolutely necessary.

Let's get on with this job! As Lewis Mumford wrote: