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
I believe in the rights of creatures other than man.
Politics is democracy's way of handling public business. We won't get the type of country in the kind of world we want unless people take part in the public's business.
I believe that the average guy in the street will give up a great deal, if he really understands the cost of not giving it up. In fact, we may find that, while we're drastically cutting our energy consumption, we're actually raising our standard of living.
We cannot go on fiddling while the earth's wild places burn....
The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature's proper steward and society's only hope.
There is no business on a dead planet
Perhaps most ridiculous of all is the suggestion that we 'keep' our radioactive garbage for the use of our descendants. This 'solution', I think, requires an immediate poll of the next 20,000 generations.
People have alleged that I have inspired many young people over the years, but I say, it was just the opposite.
What we are finding out now is that there are not only limits to growth but also to technology and that we cannot allow technology to go on without public consent.
All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent
Even if you build the perfect reactor, you're still saddled with a people problem and an equipment problem.
All I know about thermal pollution is that if we continue our present rate of growth in electrical energy consumption it will simply take, by the year 2000, all our freshwater streams to cool the generators and reactors.
Apollo 13, as you may remember, gave us a reactor that is bubbling away right now somewhere in the Pacific. It's supposed to be bubbling away on the moon, but it's in the Pacific Ocean instead.
At that time a senator who was on the Joint Committee of Atomic Energy said rather quietly, 'You know, we're having a little problem with waste these days.' I didn't know what he meant then, but I know now.