America’s 250 Years of Environmental Policy: What Comes Next?

How We Can Make America Beautiful Again

By Taylor Tougaw

In 1811, Thomas Jefferson sat in a poplar forest writing a letter to Wilson Peale. In it, he stated:

“I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position & calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, & no culture comparable to that of the garden. Such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, & instead of one harvest, a continued one thro’ the year. Under a total want of demand except for our family table. I am still devoted to the garden. But tho’ an old man, I am but a young gardener.”

As America enters its 250th anniversary, we are naturally inclined to retrospective evaluation. As we look back at what our nation has endured and overcome, it helps define who we are and what we stand for. 250 years is no small piece of time; it encompasses technological innovations and continent-level changes that our forefathers would never have been able to comprehend. In evaluating 250 years of public environmental policy, we may also conclude that, like Jefferson, America is also now an old man, but still a young gardener.

Early man intuitively recognized that every human lived at the mercy of nature. Droughts, disease, infection, and natural disasters like floods and tornadoes wreaked havoc on every civilization across the globe. One was lucky to have enough grain to survive a harsh winter, as even one bad harvest could eliminate a family or a town. Almost overnight, something changed. The industrial revolution, as we now call it, introduced machine work. Now, fields could be tilled, trees felled, crops planted, roads and houses built, and livestock managed with a mere fraction of the labor that it had taken in the previous few thousand years. Life expectancy exploded, as did cities, agricultural land, roads, and more. 

Before we knew it, the once unconquerable domination of the natural world over humans had been reduced to a mere whimper. Winters no longer bring widespread starvation. Pandemics no longer take 30 percent of the national population. Communities hit by hurricanes rebuild in just a few months, and earthquakes don’t topple buildings anymore. When humans once lived at the whim of the natural world, now the natural world lives on the whim of man. This calamitous realization underpins the entirety of the conservation movement; how ought we manage nature now that we are in control?

One of America’s favorite tall tales is that of a squirrel that, back in the old days, was able to travel from Boston to the Mississippi River using nothing but tree branches. While not literally true, it does exemplify the rich, natural world that early America enjoyed. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, over one billion acres (roughly half the landmass) of the United States was covered in mature forest. By the 1920’s, that number had dropped to 700 million acres. 

Many men greater than I have attempted to find a perfect balance of natural preservation and resource use. From Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir to Gifford Pinchot and Ralph Waldo Emerson, science, philosophy, and religion have all sought to steer the ship in the ‘correct’ way. The problem is that America, as Jefferson stated, is still a young gardener. For the first hundred years, America lived as a natural, yeoman farming society. The next hundred years brought industrialization, polluted waterways, deforestation, smog, and severe species decline. It has only been a mere fifty years or so that we have been intentional in how we manage this newfound responsibility. We are a baby deer struggling to stand on shaky legs, or a new driver behind the wheel of a car that is much too big for us. It is hard to find consensus on public environmental policy, and it ought to be hard. We have much to learn.

After a hundred years of suffering from nature and another hundred years destroying it, we must be intentional to ensure the next hundred years are handled responsibly. Responsibility means not returning to either extreme, but maintaining a healthy balance that future generations can inherit. By reorienting the power of industrialization, we can renew the natural world while maintaining a healthy, stable environment in which humans thrive with abundance. 

Of course, ideas are simply ideas if no one puts them into practice, and lofty words don’t move mountains. However, we encourage you to imagine a world where we use bulldozers not to drain the wetlands, but to restore them. Wetlands where animals thrive, and hunters have robust access to an abundance of game. A world where forests are replanted and managed with such care that they can perpetually offer enough timber for modern life while sustaining increased biodiversity. A world where we can extract an abundance of critical minerals and energy generation materials while restoring formerly degraded lands to the healthiest conditions possible. A world where invasive species are eradicated, and the heritage species that built this country are restored. This is the world that ACC Action is pursuing.

With every day that passes, we learn how to make our air cleaner, water purer, and land healthier. We can continue to do this in tandem with our increasing quality of life, not in spite of it. In July of 2025, President Trump released his Make America Beautiful Again executive order. It is the president’s sincere hope that we can restore our public lands and revitalize beautiful spaces. 

At ACC Action, we take that charge seriously. Right now, we are putting together legislation that would restore extirpated species, like the American Chestnut, to its historic range using genetically similar variants. We are also hoping to implement a grant program to fight zoonotic diseases, increase state Wildlife Management Areas, and promote robust conservation easements across the nation. ACC Action is also looking into ways we can trade unused and difficult land out west for more productive and accessible land in the east. 

These ideas and more make ACC Action more than just an ideas factory – we put our thoughts into practice and are committed to pursuing policies that ensure the next 250 years of American excellence prioritize restoration, renewal, and rebuilding.