David R. Brower
David R. Brower
David Ross Browerwas a prominent environmentalist and the founder of many environmental organizations, including the John Muir Institute for Environmental Studies, Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters, Earth Island Institute, North Cascades Conservation Council, and Fate of the Earth Conferences. From 1952 to 1969, he served as the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club, and served on its board three times: from 1941–1953; 1983–1988; and 1995–2000. As a younger man, he was a prominent mountaineer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEnvironmentalist
Date of Birth1 July 1912
CountryUnited States of America
Perhaps we'll realize that each of us has not one vote but ten thousand or a million.
True wilderness is where you keep it, and real wilderness experience cannot be a sedentary one; you have to seek it out not seated, but afoot.
Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of that problem. It has to be addressed.
While the death of young men in war is unfortunate, it is no more serious than the touching of mountains and wilderness areas by humankind.
The Peninsula is what we have and there is no more where it came from.
If something's going wrong with this planet we'd better fix it here and not look for some sort of escape.
You don't need it, but will you take some advice from a Californian who's been around for a while? Cherish these rivers. Witness for them. Enjoy their unimprovable purpose as you sense it, and let those rivers that you never visit comfort you with the assurance that they are there, doing wonderfully what they have always done.
There are many different kinds of radioactive waste and each has its own half-life so, just to be on the safe side and to simplify matters, I base my calculations on the worst one and that's plutonium.
I was actually telling people that - by harnessing the atom - we could enter a new era of unlimited power that would do away with the need to dam our beautiful streams.
Until four years ago, in fact, I was absolutely in love with the atom.
The Sierra Club is a very good and a very powerful force for conservation and, as a matter of fact, has grown faster since I left than it was growing while I was there! It must be doing something right.
I sort of kept my hand in writing and went to work for the Sierra Club in '52, walked the plank there in '69, founded Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters after that.
A great deal of pressure was then built up to remove me from the club and my resignation was, finally, a forced one.
Keep your rivers flowing as they will, and you will continue to know the most important of all freedoms-the boundless scope of the human mind to contemplate wonders, and to begin to understand their meaning.