"Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man"
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Udall’s line flips the sentimental script of environmentalism and replaces it with a hard-nosed political brief: conservation isn’t charity for forests; it’s self-defense for citizens. The genius is in the phrasing “in fact,” a small prosecutorial jab that anticipates the dismissal he was always up against as Interior Secretary in the 1960s. He’s arguing with the invisible heckler who says clean air is a luxury, wilderness a hobby, wildlife a postcard. No, he insists: these are public-health measures, economic insurance, national security by another name.
The subtext is strategic and slightly cynical. Udall knows that “nature” can feel abstract to a voter who’s worried about wages and war. So he recenters the beneficiary: “man.” It’s anthropocentric on purpose, a rhetorical bridge between the romantic language of preservation and the bread-and-butter logic of governance. In that era of rapid industrial expansion, smog, poisoned rivers, and the dawning fear of ecological limits, he’s making the case that environmental degradation is not an externality; it’s a boomerang.
Context matters: Udall helped build the modern conservation state before “environmentalism” became a mass identity. His sentence reads like a memo for coalition-building: you don’t win durable protections by asking people to love wilderness. You win by showing them it’s already in their lungs, their water pipes, their food chain, their kids’ future.
The subtext is strategic and slightly cynical. Udall knows that “nature” can feel abstract to a voter who’s worried about wages and war. So he recenters the beneficiary: “man.” It’s anthropocentric on purpose, a rhetorical bridge between the romantic language of preservation and the bread-and-butter logic of governance. In that era of rapid industrial expansion, smog, poisoned rivers, and the dawning fear of ecological limits, he’s making the case that environmental degradation is not an externality; it’s a boomerang.
Context matters: Udall helped build the modern conservation state before “environmentalism” became a mass identity. His sentence reads like a memo for coalition-building: you don’t win durable protections by asking people to love wilderness. You win by showing them it’s already in their lungs, their water pipes, their food chain, their kids’ future.
Quote Details
| Topic | Nature |
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