David Brower

David Brower was executive director of the Sierra Club from 1952 to 1969. He then founded Friends of the Earth and became its first president. He has played a leading role in many environmental controversies Echo Park Dam, the Colorado River, legislation to create a National Wilderness Preservation System, reform of the U. S. Forest Service, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and international environmental movements. Steve Chapple, assisted in the writing of Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run. He is the author of numerous books including Kayaking the Full Moon and Don't Mind Dying.

Although Thomas Jefferson argued that no one generation has a right to encroach upon another generation's freedom, the future's right to know the freedom of wilderness is going fast. -Foreword to This Is The American Earth, 1961.

 

. . . the resources of the earth do not exist just to be spent for the comfort, pleasure, or convenience of the generation or two who first learn to spend them . . . Ibid.

 

Nature recycles everything. Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run, 1995.

 

Learn
to hear the music
of the Earth. I
bid.

 

Politicians are like weather vanes. Our job is to make the wind blow. Ibid.

 

. . . we need boundaries around cities, not around wildness. Ibid.

 

"Trend is not destiny," the late René Dubos wrote. I do not blindly oppose progress. I oppose blind progress. Ibid.

 

. . . improve the literacy of women and leave the number of children to be born up to them - the nurturers, not the passersby. Ibid.

 

I started out as a boy bent over a spring. Then I climbed mountains. I became a conservationist. Then I saw what we all were doing, and I wanted to stop us from doing worse. Now I want to restore what once was, not for an old man's memories, but for a baby's smile. Ibid.

 

When you understand how recent an arrival we are, in comparison with a forest or a mountain, and you begin to understand how much wildness contributed to making us as a successful evolutionary project, you acquire some humility. Ibid.

 

. . . without wilderness,

the world's a cage. Ibid.

 

From time immemorial, our kind has fought wars. But we cannot have peace on the earth without making peace with the Earth. Ibid.

 

In wilderness is the preservation of the world. Ibid.

 

When you understand how recent an arrival we are, in comparison with a forest or a mountain, and you begin to understand how such wildness contributed to making us a successful evolutionary project, you acquire some humility. Ibid.

 

A condor is about 5 percent feathers, blood, and bone, and about 95 percent place. Place designs the condor, as it does the Arctic tern and the monarch butterfly. Ibid.

 

Let us begin. Let us restore the Earth. Let the mountains talk, and the rivers run. Ibid.

 

. . . we can't continue to destroy the earth's life support system indefinitely. It just doesn't compute. Global warming, acid rain, holes in the ozone layer, the loss of genetic diversity and desertification are just a few of the problems that have surfaced in my lifetime. Talking on the Water, 1994.

 

A fallen tree supports a biological community that may be essential to the existence of the forest itself. Ibid.

 

My feeling is we need to save wilderness for its own sake, for the mysterious and complex knowledge it has within it. Thoreau was right when he said, "In wilderness is the preservation of the world." Ibid.

 

Corporate CEOs and officers should be allowed to bypass a profit-making opportunity for social or environmental reasons without the threat of being sued by the shareholders. Ibid.

 

The assault on the earth is funded by the Fortune 500s and their friends and their customers. Ibid.

 

The faster you exhaust your resources the stronger you'll be. It can't possibly be true, but it's still being practiced by all the industrial nations of the world. Ibid.

 

According to the most statistics from World Watch Institute, the world's population is growing by 95 people every year. That's a net increase&emdash;births over deaths&emdash;equal to the population of Mexico every year. At this rate, the world's population will double by 2050. Ibid.

 

You hear all about the benefits of growth, but you never hear about the costs. Ibid.

 

We have the capability to protect, preserve, and celebrate nature. Ibid.

 

Restoration is one of the most exciting and important jobs we have. It will require new ways of working together, new technology, new teaching, and new curricula. Ibid.