Frankly, it would be tough to consider John F. Kennedy an environmental crusader by today’s standards.

Kennedy did have a strong recreational interest in the outdoors and favored protection of public lands from overuse. At times, he demonstrated great foresight, as in his warnings about what we today call urban sprawl and suburban sprawl and in his call to preserve open spaces. The sea also exerted a near-mystical hold on the president, perhaps because of his family home on Cape Cod, Mass., his love of boats and his South Pacific naval exploits during World War II.

Like many members of his generation, the power of science and the promise of exploration lured Kennedy. He believed that those twin engines of the human mind and spirit could solve societal problems without environmental damage. Thus his calls emerged to develop solar energy, for example, and to make the deserts bloom. But overall, Kennedy’s legislative initiatives reflected a policy that environmental interests should not trump the needs of agriculture and economic development, and that natural resources, such as energy and water, should be exploitable.

Here’s how he talked about issues of environmental protection and resource development:

PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT

Message to Congress on Housing and Community Development, March 9, 1961

Land is the most precious resource of the metropolitan area. The present patterns of haphazard suburban development are contributing to a tragic waste in the use of a vital resource now being consumed at an alarming rate.

Open space must be preserved to provide parks and recreation, conserve water and other natural resources, prevent building in undesirable locations, prevent erosion and floods, and avoid the wasteful extension of public services. Open land is also needed to provide reserves for future residential development, to protect against undue speculation and to make it possible for state and regional bodies to control the rate and character or community development.

Message to Congress on Conservation, March 1, 1962

We depend on our natural resources to sustain us — but, in turn, their continued availability must depend on our using them prudently, improving them wisely and, where possible, restoring them promptly.

We must reaffirm our dedication to the sound practices of conservation which can be defined as the wise use of our natural environment. It is in the final analysis, the highest form of national thrift — the prevention of waste and despoilment while preserving, improving and renewing the quality and usefulness of all our resources.

Our deep spiritual confidence that this nation will survive the perils of today — which may well be with us for decades to come—compels us to invest in our nation’s future, to consider and meet our obligations to our children and the numberless generations that will follow.

Message to Congress on Natural Resources, Feb. 23, 1961

Wise investment in a resource program today will return vast dividends tomorrow, and failures to act now may be opportunities lost forever.

Speech at Meadowdale Shopping Center, Carpentersville, Ill., Oct. 25, 1960

We live in the midst of a population explosion that is remaking the face of America. The country is filling up, recreation areas are overcrowded, our cities are jammed, our highways are clogged, and on the edges of our great cities the shopping center and ranch house have replaced the silo and the haystack until today more than a fourth of all Americans live in suburbs.

Dinner for the America’s Cup Crew, Newport, R.I., Sept. 14, 1962

I really don’t know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it’s because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes and ships change, it’s because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have, in our veins, the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea – whether it is to sail or to watch it — we are going back from whence we came.

Remarks at the Hanford Electric Generating Plant Hanford, Wash., Sept. 26, 1963

There are two points on conservation that have come home to me in the last two days. One is the necessity for us to protect what we already have, what nature gave to us, and use it well, not to waste water or land, to set aside land and water, recreation, wilderness and all the rest now so that it will be available to those who come in the future. That is the traditional concept of conservation, and it still has a major part in the life of the United States.

But the other part of conservation is the newer part, and that is to use science and technology to achieve significant breakthroughs as we are doing today, and in that way to conserve the resources which 10 or 20 or 30 years ago may have been totally unknown.

Remarks on Arrival, Cheyenne, Wyo., Sept. 25, 1963

One of the great resources which we are going to find in the next 40 years is not going to be the land — it will be the ocean. We are going to find untold wealth in the oceans of the world which will be used to make a better life for our people.

Science is changing all of our natural environment. It can change it for good; it can change it for bad.

We are pursuing, for example, new opportunities in coal, which have been largely neglected – examining the feasibility of transporting coal by water through pipelines, of gasification at the mines, of liquefaction of coal into gasoline and of transmitting electric power directly from the mouth of the mine…. At the same time, we are engaged in active research on better means of using low grade coal to meet the tremendous increase in the demand for coal we are going to find in the rest of this century.

This is, in effect, using science to increase our supply of a resource of which the people of the United States were totally unaware 50 years ago.

Message to Congress on Improving the Nation’s Health, Feb. 7, 1963

In the light of the known damage caused by polluted air, both to our health and to our economy, it is imperative that greater emphasis be given to the control of air pollution by communities, states and the federal government.

The long-range assault of multiple environmental contaminations on human health are cumulative and interrelated. It is of great importance, therefore, that our efforts to learn about and control health hazards be unified and mutually supporting.

National Academy of Sciences, Oct. 22, 1963

I would suggest a worldwide program to protect land and water, forests and wildlife; to combat exhaustion and erosion; to stop the contamination of water and air by industrial as well as nuclear pollution; and to provide for the steady renewal and expansion of the natural bases of life.

North Pacific Fisheries Negotiations, Sept. 10, 1963

It is obvious that unless international conservation agreements are strictly enforced, there is a grave danger of permanent injury to our ocean resources.

Pinchot Institute for Conservation Studies, Milford, Penn., Sept. 24, 1963

Have we ever thought why such a small proportion of our beaches should be available for public use, how it is that so many of our great cities have been developed without parks or playgrounds, why so many of our rivers are so polluted, why the air we breathe is so impure or why the erosion of our land was permitted to run so large?

I think there is evidence, however, that this nation can take action — action for which those who come after us will be grateful, which will convert killers and spoilers into allies — by building dams for many purposes, by state and local and national parks, by developing the productivity of our farms, reclaiming land, preventing soil from washing away.

USING NATURAL RESOURCES

Mormon Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Sept. 26, 1963

This state (Utah) knows that the control of water is the secret of development of the West, and whether we use it for power or for irrigation or for whatever purpose, no drop of water west of the 100th parallel should flow to the ocean without being used.

Letter to Congress on Saline Water Research, June 26, 1961

Water — one of the most familiar and abundant compounds on the earth’s surface — is rapidly becoming a limiting factor on further economic growth in many areas of this nation and the world. As time goes on, more communities will be faced with the prospect of economic distress and stagnation unless alternative sources of suitable water are developed.

University of Wyoming, Laramie, Sept. 25, 1963

Our primary task now is to increase our understanding of our environment, to a point where we can enjoy it without defacing it, use its bounty without detracting permanently from its value and, above all, maintain a living balance between man’s actions and nature’s reactions, for this nation’s great resource is as elastic and productive as our ingenuity can make it.

Campaign Remarks, Redding, Calif., September 8, 1960

In the United States, some areas are desperately short of water — and at the same time other areas are ravaged by floods. And our forests are vanishing, our wildlife is vanishing, our streams are polluted and so is the very air we breathe.

Yet American is rich in natural resources. Our impending resource crisis is not due to scarcity. It is due to under-development, despoilment and neglect.

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Eric Freedman is an assistant professor of journalism at Michigan State University. Edward Hoffman is an author and clinical psychologist in New York City.