Nixon publicly rejected the unlimited private-use view of landownership by 1970

Evidence

In a message accompanying the CEQ report, President Nixon seconded the CEQ’s argument about the importance of the landuse issue. “We have treated our land as if it were a limitless resource,” the president wrote. “Traditionally, Americans have felt that what they do with their own land is their own business. This attitude has been a natural outgrowth of the pioneer spirit. Today, we are coming to realize that our land is finite, while our population is growing. The uses to which our generation puts the land can either expand or severely limit the choices our children will have. The time has come when we must accept the idea that none of us has a right to abuse the land, and that on the contrary society as a whole has a legitimate interest in proper land use.” — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 927

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with property-rights material in the book’s argument and with the legal-systems course thread on the social limits of ownership. — connects to: Republican leaders endorsed a land ethic treating misuse as pollution by 1973 — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 535; Ecological reasoning led courts to deny landowners absolute rights over land — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 319
• CANDY: The Republican conservationist president declaring ‘none of us has a right to abuse the land’ makes a counterintuitive conversational nugget about environmentalism’s bipartisan moment.

Broader Connections

• Ecological reasoning led courts to deny landowners absolute rights over land #corroborates (0.80) — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 319