Stewart Udall
January 31, 1920 – March 20, 2010
This Commemorative Cover of the 100th anniversary of Stewart Udall’s birth was designed by “Coverscape.” It is postmarked on the 100th anniversary of Udall’s birth – January 31, 2020. Udall died on March 20, 2010.
About Stewart Udall
Stewart Udall was the greatest Secretary of the Interior in United States history. During his service for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, Stewart Udall was the driving force behind the creation of four national parks, six national monuments, eight national seashores and lakeshores, nine national recreation areas, 20 historic sites, and 56 wildlife refuges. He was the government’s primary advocate for the 1964 Wilderness Act, and he teamed up with his younger brother, Mo Udall, to help push the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act through Congress. After leaving the Administration, he worked tirelessly alongside Mo on all of the significant environmental and land protection statutes that became law in the 1970s and 1980s, including the Endangered Species Act. In all, Stewart Udall worked collaboratively with the Congress to add 3.85 million acres to the public domain.
Shortly after becoming Interior Secretary, Udall wrote The Quiet Crisis (1963) , his best-selling book on environmental attitudes in the United States. In the book, he wrote about the history of conservation in America, and the dangers of pollution, overuse of natural resources, and dwindling open spaces. Along with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, The Quiet Crisis is credited with creating a consciousness in the country that led to the modern environmental movement.
Forty years before Al Gore raised public alarm about global climate change, Stewart Udall raised the warning that anthropogenic climate change could result in catastrophe: “We have ignored the vital fact that we are utterly dependent on natural cycles of a thin and fragile layer of living plants and animals which exist where conditions of air, water, and solid earth combine to favor life, and which our scientists call the biosphere. These cycles can, of course, be seriously disrupted by our industrial and agricultural activities. Combustion in the furnaces and engines that power our industrial system produces such vast quantities of carbon dioxide that the foliage of the earth and the plankton of the sea may not be able to convert it back to carbon and oxygen. In turn, this may alter the heat-absorption capacity of the atmosphere and cause the earth’s climate to grow warmer, melting the polar ice and raising the level of the seas.” (1976: Agenda for Tomorrow by Stewart Udall, 1968, p. 104.)
After he retired from government service in 1969, Udall spent another 30 years as a private citizen working on behalf of conservation and environmental protection, including advocating solutions against global climate change decades before the topic reached public consciousness.
In his environmental biography of Stewart Udall (see below), Scott Einberger identified 3 major accomplishments that Udall made — really themes that provide lessons for us today:
- “Udall’s accomplishments in the realm of working successfully with people of differing opinions and beliefs for the common good serve as a model for “working together” and bipartisanship. The significance of this cannot be overstated in a day and age when partisan politics seem to rule supreme, particularly in the areas of environmental and climate-change mitigation laws.”
“Udall’s proposals and recommendations, specifically in regard to energy conservation and oil-addiction solutions, are still relevant and deserve more than just thought and consideration today. Increases in high-speed passenger trains, bicycle paths in cities, and solar panels on rooftops nationwide, to list just three of Udall’s recommendations, could all lead to major decreases in our use of dirty fossil fuels.”
“Stewart Udall’s writings, sayings, and doings teach us to take the long view of things. In his 1976: Agenda for Tomorrow, Udall provided blueprints for how the country could create both a life-giving and life-sustaining environment during its third century of existence. In the book, he wrote about the threats posed by global warming twenty-five years before it became a common household term… Udall recommended being proactive in solving problems rather than letting things get to the brink of catastrophe. He also believed in making decisions based not on what is best for today but what is best for tomorrow, next week, next year, the next generation, and the generation after that.”
In 2010, Congress voted to change the name of the US Department of the Interior Building in downtown Washington, DC, to the Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building.
Udall’s extended family also deserves environmental accolades. Stewart’s brother, the late Morris Udall, represented Southern Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives for thirty years. The two worked together on many environmental initiatives. Their work together dominated environmental reform for three decades. Udall’s legacy continues in the form of the Udall Foundation, which was established by the U.S. Congress in 1992 as an independent executive branch agency to jointly honor Morris K. Udall and Stewart Udall’s lasting impact on America’s environment, public lands, and natural resources, and their support of the rights and self-governance of American Indians and Alaska Natives. The work of the Foundation closely the work and legacy of the Udall brothers . The Udall Foundation awards scholarships, fellowships, and internships for study in fields related to the environment and to American Indians and Alaska Natives in fields related to health care and tribal public policy; provides funding to the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona, including its Native Nations Institute to conduct environmental policy research, research on American Indian and Alaska Native health care issues and tribal public policy issues, and training; and provides assessment, mediation, training, and other related services through the John S. McCain III National Center for Environmental Conflict Resolution (National Center or NCECR).
Recommended Reading & Viewing
- Stewart Udall: The Politics of Beauty – 2022 documentary film by John de Graaf
- Stewart Udall Finishing Funds Kickstarter Campaign
- Stewart Udall on Wikipedia
- Udall Foundation – A federal agency headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, established in 1992 that works to both strengthen the appreciation and stewardship of the environment, public lands, and natural resources and strengthen Native Nations to facilitate their self-determination, governance, and human capital goals. In addition to a major environmental conflict resolution program named after fellow Arizonan John McCain, the Foundation hosts the Stewart L. Udall Parks in Focus® Program to connect youth to the Nation’s public lands and natural resources to foster greater understanding, appreciation, stewardship, and enjoyment of those lands and resources through photography, positive outdoor experiences, and environmental education.
- With Distance in His Eyes: The Environmental Life and Legacy of Stewart Udall by Scott Raymond Einberger (2018)
- Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening by Douglas Brinkley (2022) – In Silent Spring Revolution, Douglas Brinkley pays tribute to those who combated the mauling of the natural world in the Long Sixties: Rachel Carson (a marine biologist and author), David Brower (director of the Sierra Club), Barry Commoner (an environmental justice advocate), Coretta Scott King (an antinuclear activist), Stewart Udall (the secretary of the interior), William O. Douglas (Supreme Court justice), Cesar Chavez (a labor organizer), and other crusaders are profiled with verve and insight.
- Lady Bird Johnson – Planet Patriot
“Beyond all plans and programs, true conservation is ultimately something of the mind – an ideal of men who cherish their past and believe in their future. Our civilization will be measured by its fidelity to this ideal as surely as by its art and poetry and system of justice. In our perpetual search for abundance, beauty and order we manifest both our love for the land and our sense of responsibility toward future generations.”
– Stewart Udall
“One of the most important things for any public official is to be open-minded. And Dave Brower changed my mind about the Grand Canyon dams. He showed me I was wrong. And for that I’m in his debt, no question about it.”
– Stewart Udall
As John de Graaf says, “Withdrawing his support for two power dams in the Grand Canyon, even though turning against the dams meant Udall could never be elected in his home state of Arizona again. Can you imagine any politician saying something like that today?”