RESPONSE OF THE PRESIDENT 677 



year I have sent to the Congress new bills, bills to protect our great 

 wild rivers, bills to create new parks, bills to provide funds for areas 

 of recreation and pleasure throughout our metropolitan areas. I 

 predict here this afternoon, that 1965 will set new records in con- 

 servation in America. 



Now, these are important measures for our people, but most of 

 them are expansions of the classic role of conservation. 



Today, natural beauty has new enemies, and we need new weap- 

 ons to fight those enemies. They are the products of the modern 

 world. In many ways they are the dark side of the bright achieve- 

 ments which have helped us to grow and to prosper and to improve 

 our welfare. 



The technology which has given us everything from the computer 

 to the teleprompter has created a hundred sources of blight. Poi- 

 sons and chemicals pollute our air and our water. Automobiles 

 litter our countryside. These and other waste products of progress 

 are among the deadliest enemies that natural beauty has ever known. 



Urbanization is another modern threat. More and more our 

 people crowd into the cities, cutting themselves off from nature. 

 Cities themselves then grow and spread, often devastating the coun- 

 tryside. And in every corner of the land the Nation builds, and 

 builds, and builds highways and restaurants, factories and neon 

 signs. And far too often we find the marvels of progress, only to 

 find that we have diminished the life of man. 



This is not the consequence of the deliberate depredations of a 

 few. Rather it is the result of the uncontrolled growth in building, 

 uninformed by the need to protect nature, unchecked by the citizens 

 whose world is being blighted. 



This is why I have called for a new conservation: to restore as 

 well as to protect to bring beauty to the cities as well as to keep it 

 in the countryside to handle the waste products of technology as 

 well as the waste of natural resources. 



And there is something more too. I believe in, and I fought all 

 my life for, more national parks and rivers and forests and wilderness. 

 But beauty cannot be a remote and just an occasional pleasure. We 

 must bring it into the daily lives of all our people. Children, in the 

 midst of cities, must know it as they grow. Adults, in the midst of 

 work, must find it near. All of us, in the midst of increasing leisure, 

 must draw sustaining strength from its presence. 



