Republican leaders endorsed a land ethic treating misuse as pollution by 1973

Evidence

By the early 1970s, therefore, even a number of Republican leaders were arguing in very unWhytian terms for a rethinking of “the rights and responsibilities that accompany property ownership.” The new tenor of the debate is well illustrated by a 1973 report entitled The Use of Land: A Citizens’ Policy Guide to Urban Growth. The work of a task force funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, with a membership including Pete Wilson, then mayor of San Diego, and William Reilly, a conservationist later appointed by George Bush to head the Environmental Protection Agency, the report called for a new understanding of the proper uses of land. “It is time to change the view that land is little more than a commodity to be exploited and traded,” the report declared. “We need a land ethic that regards land as a resource which, improperly used, can have the same ill-effects as the pollution of air and water, and which therefore warrants similar protection.” — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 535

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the polyad thread on environmental law origins: mainstream (even Republican) figures embraced the land ethic, connecting to Leopold framing in earlier chapters. — connects to: Conservationist ideas carried into environmentalism through an urbanized land ethic — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 44; Nixon publicly rejected the unlimited private-use view of landownership by 1970 — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 927; Bipartisan competition and industry preference for uniformity drove 1970s federal environmental law. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 261 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Land-use reformers redefined private land as a public resource warranting protection #complicates (0.85) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 964