When Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant in 1864 — setting aside the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias — he did so to preserve these lands for “public use, resort, and recreation.”
He likely said little about conservation in performing that act, but the gesture laid the groundwork for a national ethic of preservation. Theodore Roosevelt, who vastly expanded the National Park System, said it well: “The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.”
Fifty-five years ago, President Richard Nixon signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act and established the Environmental Protection Agency. At the time, he framed the challenge ahead with clarity and conviction: “The great question of the Seventies is ... shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?”
Today, the great question of our time is this: Will we undo all the progress we have achieved by making war against the environment—by thoughtlessly dismantling everything we have done in making our air cleaner, our water purer, our land better protected, and our people healthier?
The warning signs are stark. On Earth Day this year, the EPA fired approximately 280 staffers and reassigned 175 others, many of them tasked with safeguarding underserved communities from the disproportionate impacts of pollution and climate change. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has proposed rolling back core climate regulations that limit emissions from vehicles and power plants.
Make no mistake: these changes will make people sick.
I can only surmise that Trump is making these changes out of the misguided notion that they will somehow help companies make more money. Nixon, Roosevelt, Lincoln — all three were also Republican presidents. They understood what we must remember today: that conservation and conservatism are not in conflict; rather, they are deeply intertwined.
I am gravely concerned that decades' worth of environmental progress is at risk of being swept aside by a false narrative that pits economic prosperity against environmental protection. In reality, these goals are not mutually exclusive; they are mutually reinforcing.
Consider this: Between 1980 and 2017, the U.S. Gross Domestic Product grew by 165 percent. During that same period, emissions of six major air pollutants fell by 67 percent. This happened while energy consumption rose 25 percent, our population grew by 44 percent, and vehicle-miles driven more than doubled. Cleaner air and economic growth are both essential for our long-term flourishing.
As a former EPA administrator and governor of New Jersey, I have seen firsthand how smart environmental policies can spur innovation, improve public health, and create good jobs. Societies cannot thrive if people don’t have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and natural spaces to access. And the environment, in turn, needs a thriving economy to fund the next generation of clean technologies and conservation efforts.
The environmental progress we have made did not happen by accident, and we must not allow it to be dismantled in the name of shortsighted gains. Protecting the environment is not a luxury — it is quite literally essential for our survival.
Christine Todd Whitman served as New Jersey's 50th governor and later as the ninth administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
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