Lyndon B. Johnson Administration and Environment ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The presidential administration of Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-69) is most remembered for the sweeping domestic reforms under its Great Society Program and the continual struggle presented by the war in Vietnam. The Great Society initiative was announced by Johnson in a speech given at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on May 22, 1964, in which he set out his plan to establish a series of working groups to hold conferences “on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges.” Soon after, task forces were established to study virtually every aspect of the American society and to come up with domestic policy to address problem areas. Among these was the Task Force on Pollution of the Environment.

In the years preceding Johnson’s Great Society, environmental programs concentrated primarily on the conservation of natural resources and less on proactive measures to remedy environmental degradation. The environmental programs proposed and created under the Great Society umbrella were precedent setting in their scope. During the Johnson Administration, the environmental programs enacted included the Aircraft Noise Abatement Act (1968), a series of acts and amendments addressing air and water quality, The Endangered Species Preservation Act (1966), The Land and Water Conservation Fund Act (1965), the National Historic Preservation Act (1966), the National Trail System Act (1968), the Solid Waste Disposal Act (1965), the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (1968), and the Wilderness Act (1964).

Amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1963 included the Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act (1965), which established standards for automobile emissions. The legislation also set up research efforts to determine resulting health damages. In 1966, an amendment to the act expanded local air pollution control initiatives, and the 1967 amendment established Air Quality Control Regions throughout the country to monitor and report emission levels. In addition, the 1967 amendment established one national standard for emissions.

The Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965 was established, and the Public Health Service was charged with creating and enforcing regulations for the collection, transportation, recycling, and disposal of solid wastes. Prior to this legislation, most solid wastes ended up in unregulated landfills. Subsequent to the new regulations landfills were required to have a liner and an integral collection system to prohibit contaminated water from entering groundwater systems. The Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965 established a fund for federal and state acquisition of land and water bodies for recreational and conservation purposes.

The degree and quality of the environmental legislation created under the Johnson administration was superb and far reaching. For the first time in U.S. history, a collective societal view existed toward environmental protection. This view carried forward to the Richard Nixon administration when the expansive National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 was prepared and signed into law on January 1, 1970.

Bibliography:

Robert A. Divine, , The Johnson Years, Volume Two: Vietnam, the Environment, and Science (University of Kansas Press, 1990);
Bruce Schulman, Lyndon Johnson and American Liberalism: A Brief Bibliography with Documents (St. Martin’s, 2006);
Jeffrey W. Helsing, Johnson’s WarfJohnson’s Great Society: The Guns and Butter Trap (Greenwood, 2000).