Oil Drilling Was Blocked Under NEPA, Environmental Legislation From the 1970s

In March 1969, then-President Richard Nixon visited Santa Barbara, walking its damaged beaches and talking to cleanup workers. Then, on Jan. 1, 1970, he signed the National Environmental Policy Act into law. “The 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment,” he said in a statement. “It is literally now or never.”

In 1970, Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency. That same year, Earth Day was celebrated in the United States for the first time. Within the following decade, environmental protection laws passed by Congress included the Clean Air, Safe Drinking Water, Endangered Species and Compensation and Liability Acts.

“It’s kind of amazing how many acts passed in the four years after the Santa Barbara spill,” Spezio said. “Richard Nixon took the Santa Barbara spill seriously.”

The ruling last month blocking drilling leases, by Judge Rudolph Contreras of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was a major victory for environmental groups demanding that the Biden administration hold to campaign promises to move the country away from fossil fuels.

“This requires the bureau to go back to the drawing board and actually consider the climate costs before it offers these leases for sale, and that’s really significant,” said Brettny Hardy, a senior attorney for Earthjustice, one of several environmental groups that brought the lawsuit.

A spokeswoman for the Interior Department said the agency was reviewing the decision.

IREM OZTURAN, an intern at Retro Report, is a journalism and economics student at Northwestern. This article first appeared in Retro Report’s free weekly newsletter. Subscribe and receive lessons from history in your mailbox. Follow us on Twitter @RetroReport.